


Homecoming

by sleepcities



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, background ships are all over the place, good luck, mentions & depictions of anxiety/depression/trauma, mentions & depictions of violence, no beta we die like men, spoilers for. maybe every riordan series and also greek mythology lol, why won't ao3 save my tags in order that's so annoying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2020-10-11 10:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepcities/pseuds/sleepcities
Summary: But he did know what his normal dreams felt like, knew his nightmares even better, and knew his flashbacks like the back of his hand.By 2019, the crew of the Argo II have drifted apart.  An earthquake, a message from a god, and Nico di Angelo bring them back together to face the apocalypse one more time.





	1. Even Children of Jupiter Pay Taxes in LA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as of 29 may 2020, this fic has been updated to an m rating! sorry.
> 
> as of 01 august 2020, minor revisions have been made to all chapters.

You know, Jason Grace had probably lived through a handful of earthquakes in his time. After all, he was born and raised in California, and he'd certainly been around long enough to hear his classmates' and coworkers' nervous talk of the next "big one" any time an earthquake somewhere else made the news. He'd been born the same year as the infamous Northridge earthquake. He'd heard references to others in both the Bay Area _and _Los Angeles since then.

But he'd also never completely recovered from the  borderline-_Freaky-Frida_y stunt that Juno had pulled back when he was fifteen, when she'd drawn memories from his skull like blood from a vein.

A decade later, there were still gaps, blank pages in the record of his life that he simply could not fill, even though _something_ must have been there, once. Now, he just assumed there were some things he'd never know.

All of that is to say, on the fourth of July at 10AM, when the pavement of Colorado Boulevard started swaying beneath his feet, it took Jason a minute to register that this was a natural phenomenon rather than some monstrous attack.

He tore his bluetooth earbuds away and made a grasp for the Imperial gold coin in his pocket, instinctually slipping into a defensive stance, his heart pounding against the inside of his chest as he scanned his surroundings for the threat.

But there was no hellhound, no chimera, no drakon.The locals of Pasadena, California stopped in their tracks, but remained otherwise unbothered, not even halting their conversations.Out of the corner of his eye, Jason spotted a few Sephora employees eyeing shelved products worriedly, but still, there was no monster.So he cleared his throat and stood up straight again.Eventually, his fists unclenched.

It was a funny thing, being a demigod.

Most didn’t make it to their twenties, especially outside of a camp. Jason himself had only survived so long through a fortuitous combination of luck and paranoia — the rustling of a college student pacing around the corner of a bar at night set him on the verge of panic, but sometimes, around that bar corner was a cyclops lurking for a snack, and in those instances, he was glad that his senses still remained on high alert, scanning for the slightest hint of danger.

But it was exhausting, too, constantly being on edge. He'd left everything he'd known to live a life where he didn't have to constantly _be_ on edge. And he was happy. Really, he was. Or. Satisfied, at least. Moments like these, though, were reminders that he'd never be able to turn his back on his parentage completely.

With that thought and a sigh to boot, Jason decided that the first earthquake in his short, unreliable memory was a pretty good sign that it was time to end his mid-morning jog. He let his feet take him back up Colorado to the doormat of his home, a studio apartment three floors up on a corner.

A regular earthquake. How mundane.

Here he was, Jason Grace, the boy who'd fought in the Titan War, the boy who had gone up against the earth herself.Here he was, no longer a boy, no longer a hero, living in a tiny apartment in a Southern California suburb, spending five days out of the week at a desk job, returning home from his morning run to feed a betta fish named Neptune.He unlocked the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading this absurdly short first chapter! the next few are likely also going to end up being small "where are they now"s like this to give y'all an idea of how the kids are living these days. jason seemed as good a place as any to start, but it definitely helped that toa placed him in the la area lmao. 
> 
> shoutout google for knowing more than i do


	2. This Family Dinner is a Little Too Normal

Percy Jackson exited Besfren cafe with a blue limeade in one hand and a boxed assortment of six miniature cakes in the other. The ping of an incoming iMessage rang out from his back pocket. Thank the gods for technological advancements—he’d never thought he’d be able to carry a cellphone, but as the years had passed and Annabeth had upgraded her archaic (and contraband) Motorola RAZR, they’d found that monsters couldn’t hear texts the way they could hear calls. There were complications, of course. They still had to be careful—mentioning demigod or monster business even over text was a guaranteed way to let every cyclops in a twelve mile radius pinpoint your location—but the convenience of being able to text his mother instead of praying he had an extra drachma swimming around in one of his pockets was unparalleled. He shuffled the plastic bag of desserts onto his left pinkie, careful not to drop his limeade, and dug his phone out of his pocket.

The notifications showed a new audio message from "Mom 💙":

_Are you coming home for dinner tonight or going out with Grover? It's almost ready, so let me know!_

Even over the speakers, her voice made a smile spread across his face as he thumbed the home button. "Text Mom."

"What do you want to say?" Siri asked.

"I'm on my way."

"Here's your message. Ready to send?"

He didn't bother trying to read the words that came up on the screen. They would probably be close enough. 

"Send," he replied, and started down 32nd toward the Herald Square station.

A little over half an hour later, his limeade was long gone, cup discarded in some subway trash can, and he was in Hell’s Kitchen, swinging the door of their small apartment open to see his sister perched on the couch, engrossed in some game on her 3DS. The smell of sautéing onions wafted into the living room. The quiet buzz of the TV was almost overtaken by the sizzling sound coming from the kitchen.

“Percy!” His shoes were halfway off when Estelle came bouncing up to him, giving him a quick, one-armed hug before excitedly displaying her 3DS. “I made it to the Elite Four!”

A crooked grin broke out over his face. “Did you beat them yet? Which one are you on?”

“Not yet! I’m still trying to get past Olivia.”

Percy ruffled her wavy hair. “Oh yeah?”

“Ye—“ Estelle was interrupted by a call from the other room.

“Percy? Estelle! Dinner’s ready, come help!”

The two made their way into the kitchen, where an apron-clad Paul Blofis was taking a stack of plates out of the cabinet and Sally was standing over the stove with a wooden spoon in hand.

Spying the bag in Percy’s hand, Sally beamed. “Is that what I think it is?”

He held the bag up for a second, showcasing the label as confirmation, then moved to put it in the fridge. Estelle slid open the creaky silverware drawer to fetch utensils.

“Did you all hear about the earthquake?” Paul’s voice came from the dining room, followed by the clatter of plates being distributed.

“Earthquake?” he called back. “No, why?”

“Yeah, the one in California! Thought something might be up, y’know, with that being your dad’s territory and all.”

Percy shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything, no.” _But it’s kinda been a while since I heard anything at all_, he couldn’t help but think.

“Probably nothing, then.”

Yeah. Probably nothing. But Percy Jackson, of all people, knew better than to count on his luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> percy has entered the chat!
> 
> i've been wanting to write percy going to besfren for a hot minute here because i love the idea of him taking home a mini dessert assortment for his family but i looked up their menu to see if i could make him buy a drink as well... lo and behold, they actually have a blue drink?? stars are aligning, y'all.


	3. There's Nothing Like Waking Up to an Alarm Rather Than an Imminent Threat

Because it was a Thursday, the alarm clock started blaring at 7:30AM.Because it was a holiday, a pale hand reached out from under the duvet and slapped the “off” button almost immediately.Annabeth yawned, squeezed her eyes shut, and snuggled closer to the body next to her, but the damage had been done.She would not be getting back to the sweet state of deep sleep that had graced her just moments before.A tragedy, really.

She huffed a small sigh through her nose.Usually, she’d keep a certain level of enthusiasm about going to work.It certainly wasn’t the most convenient—a forty-five minute drive through San Francisco traffic either way—but she got to spend all day working on gorgeous Bay Area buildings, and when she wasn't doing _that_, she got to spend time with her own designs. It was literally a dream come true.

But... even so, she was looking forward to having some time off. It'd been a while since she'd given herself and Reyna a _truly_ free day, and with nothing _really _on their holiday itinerary, they might be free to stroll around New Rome for a bit. They could waste time at the cafe that Jason used to love so much.Or maybe they’d drive out after all, hang around Berkeley at that half-off bookstore Annabeth liked (provided that it was open, what with the national holiday and all), or head out to Oakland for Homeroom’s garlic mac and cheese (she'd risk life and limb for that mac and cheese. The forty-five minutes in traffic would be more than worth it).

Honestly, it was funny.

She’d hated the Bay when she was a kid, hated being so far from Camp Half-Blood, so much that every step she’d taken west had felt like a step toward the edge of a cliff.Twelve-year-old Annabeth never would’ve guessed that she’d be living here by _choice_ as an adult.

But then, twelve-year-old Annabeth hadn’t known about New Rome.Twelve-year old Annabeth also hadn’t known about Reyna.

At that age, she’d expected to live a short life and go down fighting before ever reaching adulthood.After all, most of the demigods she’d known had gone out in a similar fashion.She’d just hoped that she’d be fighting next to Percy Jackson when it happened, and that he would somehow make it out safely.Now, he was an entire country away, Camp Half Blood was about five times the size it used to be, and she was… here.In a city where she and Percy had once thought they could spend the rest of their lives together.Time sure did change things.

But a gentle stirring from beside her interrupted her brain’s rambling.

Reyna groaned, the sound trailing off slowly.In the years following her service as praetor, and later as a Huntress, she’d learned to appreciate sleeping in.“Isn’t it a bit early to be thinking so much?” she teased.Her voice was still thick with sleep, but it was laced just as heavily with affection.

“I wasn’—“

Reyna rolled over to face Annabeth, brushed pale strands of blond hair away from her forehead.“You were staring at the ceiling without blinking again.”

Annabeth couldn’t help but crack a smile.The first time she’d met Reyna, it had been like looking in a mirror.It really wasn’t all that surprising that the girl would be able to read her like a book.“I’m thinking—,” she paused to cup Reyna’s face in her hands and bring her in for a kiss, “—that we have about thirteen hours of free time before they start the fireworks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short update! aaaaand... finally introducing... reynabeth! i know they aren't really the main focus of this fic, but i'm super excited to write about these two all these years later. i like to think that their fundamental similarities/understanding of each other coupled with their kind of levelheaded approach to situations would make them really good for helping each other through... all the shit that went down in their lives lmao. but i'm getting carried away! we'll get to all that later.


	4. Sometimes a Break is Seven Years, and That's Okay

Okay, so maybe 1:49AM on a national holiday wasn’t the best time to be driving over the Willamette River.But to her credit, Piper couldn’t sleep — this time of year always threw her into a particular mental fog.After all, just a few days ago had been Jason Grace’s birthday.And the anniversary of the day Piper and the others of the Prophecy of Seven had defeated the giants Ephialtes and Otis and saved Nico di Angelo.And of the day Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase fell into Tartarus.She shuddered at that last thought especially, turning the Chevy pickup’s volume dial up a few notches.The spell of the anniversaries hadn’t really worn off yet, so here she was, on the Marquam Bridge well past midnight, trying to give herself anything else to think about.

She hadn’t seen the others in… ages.In some ways, that was the point of the whole “taking a break” thing, wasn’t it? Hadn’t she and Jason agreed to try out school across the country to step away from demigod life?

But then, it hadn’t really worked.Meg McCaffrey and Apollo had still shown up on her doorstep.She’d still had to fight her way through impossible odds.Jason had still come mere inches from death.It was too much.And it'd felt _wrong_, leaving him alone—pale, sweaty, and bleeding—in a hospital with the broken shaft of a spear protruding from his lower back, but it'd felt wrong to stay, too, while his attacker was still out there, lounging on some yacht.

She turned the volume up again.

A break.A break.Seven years was a little long for a break, but gods, did she need it.A year of being a demigod was too much.Forget about a _lifetime_.

Of course she still encountered monsters—she'd run into a horde of aeternae just last week—but monsters were nothing compared to quests and prophecies and murderous waking goddesses.She didn’t really think she’d ever get enough time away from that.But seven years was a good start.

Her “break” had had a terrible beginning.Her father had lost his acting career, his house in Malibu, his agents, his assets.They’d had to move to his old cabin in Tahlequah, which, under any other circumstances, Piper wouldn’t have minded a bit.If, somewhere in another universe, Tristan McLean had decided to stop taking roles for a year or so and move back to Oklahoma in order to reconnect with his roots, or to spend time with Piper, or for literally any other reason, Piper would have been ecstatic.Instead, she’d had to watch her father’s hard work crumble to nothing.Even the cabin in Tahlequah that she had once longed for became a reminder of the Triumvirate.

It wasn’t long before the old Roman emperors were brought down, though, and Tristan McLean was restored, both in name and in bank account.When he bought back their Malibu mansion, Piper really did try to resettle.She was sure he did too, but, ultimately, they didn’t even last a year back on the California coast.It was too bitter.And so they moved, and had been in the area of Portland, Oregon ever since.It was greener than Los Angeles, quieter.Piper’s father had to be out of state for work, most of the time, but she’d learned not to mind as much—she missed him, but it was a relief to see him… content, again.

Mitski’s voice floated out over the speakers as she approached Sunnyside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short update! and this one is for piper. spoiler warning maybe, but certain events in toa affected her especially and specifically, and i think that even if it would have gone differently, she'd benefit from taking time off with her dad, so that's what i gave her, at least for a while.
> 
> shoutout @ magpies for "piper listens to mitski" solidarity. we decided the song is washing machine heart


	5. It's Always the Peanut Butter, Isn't It?

Leo leaned over the handle of the shopping cart, balancing on tiptoes on a rear wheel, drumming his fingers rapidly against the plastic fold-down child seat. “Cal, please. We haven’t eaten real junk food in weeks. A man needs some fuckin’ Oreos.”

His girlfriend, the Titan Calypso (well… de-Titan-ified, but still definitely Calypso), wrinkled her nose. “Leo, we can make better cookies—we _have been making_ better cookies.”

Leo gave an exaggerated sigh, stepping off the shopping cart to gesture dramatically. “It’s not about the quality of the—okay, no, it is about the quality. I want to eat terrible quality, mass-produced, processed food, just, like, every once in a while. Cal, have you _tried_ a Hostess CupCake? They’re disgusting. And necessary to my wellbeing.”

She rolled her eyes. After spending millennia marooned on an unfindable island, entirely cut off from the rest of the world… no. She had not, in fact, tried a Hostess CupCake, and Leo’s less-than-glowing review didn’t really make her any more eager to. “Why would you want to eat that, Leo? You just said they were disgusting.”

He threw one arm across her shoulders and swept the other, outstretched, in an arc in front of them like he thought he was Disney's Aladdin. “_Oh_, no, Calypso…. That’s not it. The nutrition facts’ll let you know they’re disgusting for sure, but they’re still delicious.” He shot her a mischievous grin, and she playfully pushed him away, landing a soft punch to his bicep for good measure.

“Alright,” she turned to face him, one eyebrow raised, voice stern. “We can get _one_ package of Oreos and _one_ bag of chips—“

“Whoa, now, Sunshine, I didn’t say anything about chi—“

“If you want either one of them, don’t finish that sentence.” She bit the inside of her cheek to suppress the smile that wanted to bubble up. Glancing back at him, she cautioned, “Take the deal, Leo.”

He held up his hands in surrender, and they made their way to the junk food aisle, where Leo picked out a pack of s’mores Oreos (_Disgusting_, Calypso thought, not knowing her mind would soon be changed) and a family size bag of sour cream and onion Lay’s (a struggle and a compromise, seeing as Leo’s preferred flavor was cheddar while Calypso’s was salt and vinegar). As usual, they left with more than they were expecting to, and Calypso was the only one that remembered the reusable bags.

Halfway home on the train, they realized they’d forgotten peanut butter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> calypso and leo have arrived! honestly this chapter is like 400% banter but their constant bickering is so endearing to me that i couldn't resist lmao. i hope they're having a good life at the waystation for now at least... they've more than earned an ounce of peace.


	6. The Occupational Hazards of Being Alive

“I’m telling you, Frank, something’s _wrong_.”Hazel was trying to enjoy her lunch, but there had been such a terrible feeling crawling along her spine since news of the earthquake this morning.

Her fellow praetor sent her an apologetic glance.“I believe you, Hazel.But until we know what it is, all we can do is prepare and be on guard.We’ve already told the Legion to be ready to evacuate, and the city authorities have the reserve on guard.Whatever it is, we’ll be ready.”He tried to muster what she recognized as his Reassuring Smile, the right corner of his mouth a little higher than the left, his eyes warm.

“It isn’t coming yet.”But Hazel fiddled with a few thin braids.She certainly didn’t _feel_ prepared for a catastrophe, not sitting under an umbrella with a picked-at panini abandoned on the plate before her.Her anxiety must have been downright palpable, because Frank reached across the café table to offer a hand to her. She sighed and placed her own hand in his.

“I know I’m not as worried as you are because I can’t literally feel whatever is going on,” he started, “but the world has been ready to end before.”He traced his thumb over the the ridges of her knuckles.

He would have had a point, but Hazel knew this was different.It felt a little like it did back when Gaea was stirring, sure—like something unimaginably old and powerful was beginning to wake to the present-day world, but this feeling… it was angrier.The earth was trembling not because it was stirring on its own, but because it was being shaken and split by something much less lethargic.

As dangerous as whatever-it-was was, though, she was fed up. She wanted to meet it head-on, put the blade of her spatha to its throat, dare it to _try her_.How many times had she almost lost Frank or Percy?Or Nico?Or, really, any one of her friends?How many times had she _actually_ lost someone?She wanted this thing to know that it couldn’t have any of them, not again.She’d say it would have to pry them from her cold, dead hands, but… well, if it was anything like Gaea, or Tarquin, or any of the other forces she’d had to go up against over the years, her cold, dead hands were probably already part of its plan.

Somehow that was even more frustrating.

But it was true: they couldn’t stop it at this moment, not when they didn’t even know what it was.So, for now… she took another sip of her espresso and her first _real_ bite of panini, and watched as Frank started to unwind his own nerves, following her cue.

»»————-————««

The fireworks were fantastic, as expected.Annabeth and Reyna shared their picnic blanket on the grass surrounding the Field of Mars, and between the two of them, Hazel, Leila, and Frank, they had amassed enough snacks to feed all of New Rome.

Hazel leaned back on one hand and nibbled on the corner of a brownie.Frank shot her a grin, draping an arm across Leila's shoulders and squeezing her briefly before relaxing back himself.Reyna was lying down, by this point, her head rested comfortably on Annabeth’s stomach.The daughter of Athena had propped herself up on her elbows, and was now tossing back a final sip of moscato, served as the gods intended: in a red Solo cup with a couple cubes of now-long-melted ice.For a little while, the occupational hazards of being alive faded into a distant static in the back of their minds.

»»————-————««

The next night, the _Argo II _crew’s iMessage group chat received a new text after three days of silence.

_how quickly can you all get to new rome?it’s important_

Nico.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i've done my math right, hazel and frank should be in their last year of service to the legion by 2019... sucks when the apocalypse decides to start up again right before retirement, doesn't it? and yes, in this world, the legion is not the primary army for new rome. hazel and frank made some changes. my city now.
> 
> aaaand a cameo of our final member! he will have a proper introduction, though, i promise. i could never abandon him like that.
> 
> feel free to direct all questions, comments, and concerns to https://stygianswords.tumblr.com/ask


	7. Anime Expo Takes a Backseat to the God of the Dead

Okay.If he were to be honest, Nico would have to admit that he didn’t _usually_ sleep particularly well.He’d gotten used to that, over the years (which, for the most part, had been easier than it could have been—after all, the nightmares and flashbacks and dreams of what might have been his life before the Lotus Hotel and Casino had decreased in both frequency and intensity over the past decade or so).

But this… was new.

For the past several days, his dreams had been going haywire.Fault lines, hands bruised and burnt beyond recognition clawing their way out of a fissure in the earth.A burning feeling in his chest like drinking fire—and he would know; he’d done it before.

At some point, the setting shifted.Or rather, it was swallowed.The whole world disappeared, dissolved and sucked away, leaving Nico somewhere in the dark.The darkness in the dream had weight, but it was also _nothing_.It exerted unbelievable pressure, all the while pulling him apart.It was like having your bones and organs crushed while your skin was trying to lift itself off and walk away, and, somewhere, the lucid part of his brain supposed that this must be what outer space felt like.The lucid part of his brain was apparently never quite loud enough, though, because the dream persisted no matter how badly he wanted it to stop.For a little over a week, he’d woken up every night at 3:33AM in a cold sweat, feeling like his lungs had at some point collapsed on him.The dream had become especially vivid since the earthquake yesterday.

Even for him, this wasn’t normal.

It shouldn’t have come as so much of a surprise, then, when he awoke at noon on July fifth to find his father sitting on his couch.

The god had prepared two mugs of coffee—since when did Hades know how to use a $15 coffee machine?—and was lounging about with a copy of the LA Times.His dark hair was tied into a low ponytail secured by a ribbon, and he was dressed for work in a fitted suit, but his feet were clad in house slippers that matched Nico’s own.It was so mundane he almost wanted to laugh.

“Good morning,” Hades greeted.He sounded like he wanted to mean it.

Nico yawned a response.

“Sit,” Hades instructed, apparently missing the irony of inviting someone to take a seat on their own furniture.“How do you take your coffee?”

The Lord of the Dead does not appear in your living room to learn about your coffee preferences, no matter how much either of you might wish he would.“Father… why are you here?”

Hades’ face took on a distant kind of melancholy.Nico knew he didn’t like feeling like they only spoke when he needed Nico to do something, but the Lord of the Underworld was a little busy to be spending significant time on father-son bonding.Sure, sometimes he’d call upon his son for some relatively small task as an excuse to get in a few minutes of chat surrounding the request, but in those cases, he always summoned Nico to the Underworld.If he had gone out of his way to manifest himself in the mortal realm, abandoning his post for even a few moments, he wasn’t here to make small talk. 

Nico’s suspicions were proven correct.

“I fear that something may be trying to escape Tartarus.”

Wrong answer.The blood drained from Nico’s face.He felt every muscle tense, felt the acid heat of the pit, smelled the sour rot of its atmosphere.Hades couldn’t possibly be asking him to go back, could he?He wouldn’t, not after last time.There was no way.

Although, how could a god understand what Tartarus was to a mortal?

“I am not asking you to investigate it from inside,” Hades clarified quickly, looking sorrier than Nico had ever seen him before.“I wouldn’t dare.”He must have noticed his son’s sudden ability to breathe again, because he continued, “That does not mean that your help will not be needed.”It was an apology as much as it was a statement.The gods’ ability to act in the mortal world was always more limited than it seemed it should have been.

Nico took a breath, trying to muster an ounce of the angry indignation he’d been full of as a teenager, but it just wasn’t there.He’d grown to understand Hades more in the past nine years than he’d expected to in his entire lifetime and then some.

“What’s trying to escape?” he asked instead.

The god of the dead shook his head.“I don’t know yet.”

Nico gave a single nod.That sounded about par for the course.

A sudden beeping interrupted their conversation, and Hades’ countenance morphed to sport a deep scowl.It only lasted a second, though, and he quickly looked back at his son with his third apologetic glance of the morning.“I can’t stay,” he explained.“But whatever is happening, do try not to shoulder it on your own.”

He faded out of the room before Nico could respond.

“Well, fuck.”

»»————-————««

_"Don’t try to shoulder it on your own." _ _Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad._

Fine, so maybe Hades had a point, but how could Nico ask anyone to dive back into the chaos of an impending threat again?They’d all moved on.Hazel and Frank were in the final stretch of their praetorship, and the past several years had been rather quiet for them.Jason was probably no more than an hour's drive away, and Nico hadn’t spoken to him in person in a good handful of years.Reyna had retired both as praetor and as a Huntress to a quiet life with Annabeth.Last he’d heard, Percy was still in New York, Leo and Calypso were still in Indianapolis, and Piper was… somewhere, for sure.It was kind of a mystery—she’d mentioned moving away from Oklahoma, but never where she’d moved to, as far as he knew.Lou Ellen was back at Camp Half-Blood, acting as head counselor to the Hecate cabin.Cecil Markowitz was probably still there, too.Gods knew where Thalia and the Hunters were.And Will… he couldn’t ask Will.

But he sighed to himself.He knew what had to happen.So much for grocery shopping, then.So much for Anime Expo.

Nico put off The Text for as long as he could manage.He’d never been good at asking for help, and this particular request seemed like it would be turning into much more.So, for a while, he cleared his fridge and cupboards of perishable foods.Might as well make sure he didn’t come home to an ant problem, right?After he’d taken the garbage out to the dumpster in the underground parking lot of his complex, he decided to shower, then packed a duffle bag in anticipation.But even packed and, for all intents and purposes, ready to go, he didn’t want to do it.

»»————-————««

The mainshock hit at 8:19PM.

Nico’s stomach lurched when the floor started to sway beneath him.Gods, it was wrong.It was wrong.As someone who had never been destined for a quest before, he’d never had truly prophetic dreams—intuitive, maybe, and often terrible, but never _predictive_.But he was certain, now, that this tremor was caused by the owner of the hands he’d seen in his nightmares.This was the _something_ that his father had described.It couldn’t wait.

He pulled his phone from his bag, took a deep breath, and texted the most qualified people he knew.

_how quickly can you all get to new rome?it’s important_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (grimes voice) finally introducing... nico!!!! (did i use this joke already? i totally used this joke already.)
> 
> sorry he didn't get a ton of lines this chapter, ahaha. the next couple are more dialogue-heavy. i like to think that he's chilled out significantly over the years, but i think there'd be some heavy residual social anxiety & unwillingness to burden people. he's too kind a person, in a lot of ways.
> 
> this is also probably the first mention of what is bound to be ridiculously thick trauma surrounding the wars and, you know, tartarus, but it won't be the last. hopefully they all work through it okay.
> 
> i feel like my bias is showing based on word count alone, but hear me out: this is my son and he deserves more screen time. thank u for understanding.
> 
> also. i love hades' interactions with nico in the latter parts of the series so much.


	8. Is It a Family Reunion If Gods Don't Have DNA?

So the thing about New Rome was this: it was a five and a half hour drive for Jason, and a three and a half day drive for Percy.And Percy wasn’t the one that could survive a plane. 

Nico had offered to shadow travel the out-of-state members of the crew, but after Reyna pointed out that, including his recuperation time, jumping everyone to New Rome would most likely take even longer than leaving them to road trip, he conceded. 

And so here Jason was, on the morning of the tenth, splashing warm water over his face in an old friend’s apartment bathroom before he would set out to meet with the teammates he hadn’t seen in… ages, now.He vaguely recalled thinking that he would have liked to wish Leo a happy birthday in person, but, hey, better late than never.That said, though, he toyed with the idea of getting a birthday cupcake for his best friend, and, glancing at his watch, realized that if he wanted to do that, he’d have to leave now.

“Nathan!” he called out, pulling a heathered blue T-shirt over his head.His old friend hummed a response from his room down the hall.“I’m going to Bombilo’s!You want anything?”

“I’m good,” came the still-sleepy reply.Jason remembered their days in the cohort together—even if Nathan routinely woke up early, he was never truly ready to function before eleven.Such was the life of a Somnus legacy.

Jason padded down the hall to his friend’s bedroom doorway and, leaning in, held his hand out for a fist bump.“Thanks for letting me stay, man.”

His old friend obliged.“What, don’t tell me you thought I’d forget about you saving my ass in the war games.You can stay whenever.”

The son of Jupiter gave a grateful smile.“Thank you anyway.I’ll see you later.”He made his way out the front door and down the street to Bombilo’s cafe/bakery.

»»————-————««

Jason slid a couple denarii across the counter and picked up the small, bow-tied box that held Leo’s birthday dessert.If he hadn’t changed—and he probably hadn’t—chocolate on chocolate was still the way to go.

He made his way past the order counter, into the back room that served as a seating area for the cafe, and for a solid three seconds, the tingle of _ohnoI'minthewrongplace_ that he remembered so well from college crept down his neck. (Seriously, there was nothing quite like walking into your first class and having the professor introduce themself as... not your professor.)

He flipped through his messages to confirm that, yes, they _were_ meant to meet at Bombilo's, which he knew was where he was right now, and they were definitely meant to meet at 10. A glance at the top of his screen confirmed that it was currently 10:03, so he was in the right place at the right time for sure. It was only then that he realized he was the first to arrive. 

And then he realized he was wrong.

There, at a long, live-edge wood table against the furthest wall.Had Percy’s back not been turned to him, Jason was sure he would have recognized the son of Poseidon immediately, because when he turned, Jason realized he had barely changed.Sure, he was dressed differently.He’d abandoned the orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt that Jason had grown so accustomed to seeing him in in favor of a loose Led Zeppelin graphic tee and dark cargo pants.His jawline was a little more angular, his curly hair was cut shorter, and he wasn’t as wiry these days, but it was most definitely Percy.He had the same warm brown skin, the same blue-green eyes with too much fire in them for a son of a sea god, the same easy smile, and while he was waiting, he’d been talking to… not Annabeth, but—hold up.

Wait a minute. 

_Nico?_

His facial features were beyond recognizable—same wide eyes, straight nose, high cheekbones—but Jason _really_ wouldn’t have known it otherwise.He’d apparently grown, for one thing, since he was as tall as Percy was.He wasn’t even close to that sickly, deathly pale anymore, and his hair was no longer haphazardly overgrown.Instead, it was tied, half-up, into a bun.The sections that wouldn't quite reach his hair tie fell in waves to his jaw, aside from the few escaped strands of overgrown bangs that were still shorter, brushing just to his cheeks.If that weren’t enough, he’d switched out his bomber jacket and skull motifs (save for _that _ring, of course) for a heavily-printed cream-colored shirt that Jason distinctly recognized from Uniqlo’s Jean-Michel Basquiat collaboration (what could he say, he was a regular customer), layered over a dark brown long-sleeve and tucked into jeans that were actually blue.

Well.That was a change in branding.

Physical appearance aside, though, Percy grinned at him, a little distant but still welcoming, like they were teenagers back at one of the camps, and Nico nodded acknowledgement as he approached, and suddenly, Jason was back in the summer of 2010 after the war was over, at a summer camp for demigods with his friends.He hadn’t thought so much about missing them until they were right before him again. Immediately, the thought stung.In the years after the war, after the disaster with Apollo, when Piper wasn't speaking to him and Reyna was off gods-know-where, there had been times when Jason had felt like the remaining members of the quests to stop Gaea and Octavian were all he had. Then he'd lost them. And now he was about to be reunited with all of them. But would they have met in person again without the threat of another quest?

He didn't know.

Once he’d made his way across the room, Percy clapped him on the shoulder.“Hey, man, what’s good?”They slid their palms across each others’ and ended in a fist bump.Nico didn’t offer a hand, but he did grace (haha, get it) Jason with a spoken greeting before filling him in on the obvious.

“We’re still waiting on the others,” he said.Then, quickly, to make sure Jason knew they hadn’t been waiting for him for long, “Percy got here a couple minutes ago.”And it was strange, honestly.Even though it had been years, now, and even though he'd witnessed much of the repair of their relationship, Jason still couldn’t picture Nico di Angelo behaving so… casually with Percy Jackson—especially not alone.But here they were.There was no bristling, no icing out.The two had never been especially close, necessarily, and they didn't seem to be now, but they were still on better terms than they had ever been during the war with Gaea.In the back of his mind, Jason wondered if Percy had ever made it up to Nico for regarding him as a potential threat for all those months, making him prove himself so often, all the way up until Percy and Annabeth had finally gotten out of Tartarus.He hoped he had. (Jason hoped _he_ had, too, but that was another story.) Anyway.

“Still waiting on the others?You mean to tell me that Reyna Ramirez-Arellano is running _late_?” he teased.“Hell must be freezing over.”

Nico grinned darkly, one eyebrow raised.“It does that, occasionally.The Fields of Punishment drop below zero in the winter.”Okay, maybe he hadn’t changed so much after all.

Percy shivered in spite of the California summer heat.“Aaaand that’s enough of that conversation.I never want to look at the Fields again.”

Luckily for Percy, _that_ _conversation_ stuttered to a halt when the cafe’s front door was flung open, its bell jingling wildly.Across the rooms, a voice rang out.“Is that our very own Superman?” 

Jason turned.

“_Leo!_” 

Jason and Leo rushed toward each other like characters at the end of a romantic drama, colliding in a hug with such force the former stumbled backward a step.The son of Hephaestus was uncharacteristically free of motor oil, even after his flight in on Festus.His head rested comfortably under Jason’s chin, and Jason was so happy to see him that, for a solid few seconds, his brain didn’t even register that Leo’s hair was blue, dyed to a deep navy that was almost indistinguishable from his natural black.The rest of him was the same as he remembered—somewhere between lithe and scrawny, with a mischievous-looking face that would have placed him visually among Hermes’ children before Hephaestus’.“Leo, you—“

“Yeah, yeah,” the demigod laughed, pulling back from the hug.“You’re happy to see me, how did you ever survive without me, I kn—“A freckled arm came up behind him and brought a fist down softly on his fluffy head.

“Piper!”Jason’s once-girlfriend was standing about a foot back, arm in arm with Calypso, fist still firmly planted on their mutual best friend’s head.

Piper smiled back at him, her eyes suddenly looking particularly watery.“Hey, Sparky.”She unhooked her arm from Calypso’s and wrapped Jason in a hug, her forehead pressed to his sternum.He held her close and ran a hand through her hair, noting that it was no longer cut into the uneven layers she'd kept the last time he'd seen her, ages ago.She’d allowed it to grow out, long and silky and all one length.“I missed you,” she mumbled into his shirt.

Jason could feel himself tearing up as well.“Missed you too, Pipes.”She took a deep breath against his chest and slowly disentangled herself from him.When she looked up again, her eyes weren’t quite so shiny.

Meanwhile, Calypso and Percy regarded each other cautiously.Jason had heard about their… past experiences. And, yes, they’d been in the same group chat for years, but that wasn’t the same as seeing each other face-to-face again.Thankfully, Leo broke the ice, throwing an arm around each of their shoulders and jokingly introducing them as his “girlfriend and supervisor” and “favorite Teen Titan, Aqualad”.Jason smiled a bit.Leo used to harbor so much anger toward Percy for leaving Calypso.To see them trying to get along in the same room was enough to satisfy him.

Nico, on the other hand, didn’t seem so satisfied.He was fidgeting with the skull-shaped ring on his finger, a tic that Jason had come to read as a sign of discomfort.

“So?”Jason very intentionally interrupted whatever Nico was thinking about.“How have you, uh, been?”

The younger demigod snorted.“Peachy, and yourself?”Yeah, fair.They weren’t exactly here under the best circumstances.

“I missed everyone,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth. 

Nico eyed him quizzically. “You kind of dropped off after a while.”

Jason couldn’t really argue with that.“Yeah,” he mumbled, looking away guiltily.

But the son of Hades made a low humming noise in the back of his throat.“Don’t feel bad about it, Grace.We all kind of drifted.”

He nodded in response.If he had to think about it, _really _think about it, he supposed he’d simply burnt out.He’d had a taste of regular life at Chiron’s insistence, gone to private school in Southern California, and gotten hooked on the sweet, sweet normalcy of the mortal world.Still… how could it be that he’d only spoken to Leo and Piper over text for years?How could he have stopped talking to Reyna?After practically begging Nico to trust him, how could he simply disappear?Shouldn’t Nico be upset?Shouldn’t all of them?

“Hey.”Jason looked up to black eyes fixing him with a vaguely concerned stare.“I’m not kidding—we all got busy with living actual lives, and it was never your responsibility to keep everyone else together.We weren’t expecting that of you.”

He didn’t really know what to make of that.In the context of life as a demigod son of Jupiter, he’d always felt… smothered under the weight of others’ expectations.He knew others looked to him to be a leader, to be strong, to keep it together, to keep _them_ together, but… maybe not anymore.He wondered if he was okay with that.

“Hey, di Angelo, what did you do to my boy? He looks like he's having an existential crisis,” Leo came up from behind, ruffling Jason’s hair and giving him a few solid pats to the shoulder.Nico rolled his eyes, but he didn’t look angry.Leo took a deep breath and opened his mouth to say something else when the bell at the entrance chimed again.

Nico stepped away from the table for the first time and started making his way across the room.Standing in the doorway were two figures cloaked in the purple robes of praetors.One of them was massive, linebacker-sized and -shaped, with black hair shaved into a monk cut and features that remained gentle in spite of their owner’s overall bulk.The second was over a foot shorter and much softer, with dark hair tied delicately into box braids.

»»————-————««

The children of the Underworld wrapped each other in a big, lingering hug, and when they finally broke apart, Nico tilted Hazel’s chin up and bent over to place a quick kiss on her cheek.She smiled sweetly and turned to brush her lips against his cheek at the last second before he stood up straight again, beaming back at her.

Then, he clasped hands with Frank and allowed himself to be pulled into a one-armed hug, and Jason had two thoughts: first, that he was not going to get used to Nico being over 5'8, maybe ever, and second, that he wasn't sure when Nico and Frank had become friends.

As the trio made their way to the table, Frank laughed about something Hazel said and, apparently forgetting that his head was practically shaved bald, went to finger-comb his hair back.And something caught the light that streamed in through the high windows.

“Zhang, holy _fuck_!” Leo exclaimed in place of an actual _hello_, taking a few large strides to meet the praetors.He had to tiptoe to comfortably grasp Frank’s wrist from where it still rested at the back of the son of Mars' head, but he did, and brought the hand to eye level, examining the band on his left ring finger.“This—you—congratulations!”

The group in general broke out into excited clamoring, Piper and Percy surging forward as well. 

“What—”

“When—”

“You’re getting _married_!”

And they were so wrapped up in the news that they didn’t notice as two young women approached until they had joined the circle and one of them had slung an arm across Piper's shoulders.

“That's right,” Annabeth Chase mused.“You never ended up texting the groupchat about that, did you?”Reyna was at her side, and they were… holding hands?

The praetor shrugged, clearly embarrassed, and rubbed at the back of his neck. "I mean, I was going to eventually, but we haven't planned anything quite yet, so..."

“Hold up, hold up,” Percy interrupted. "'We'? Who's '_we_'? I didn't even know you were dating these days, dude!"

Frank's face flushed pink.

Hazel Levesque gave him an encouraging nudge with one shoulder.

"Um, Leila? Said? She's in the Fourth Cohort, so I don't know if you guys—"

"Oh man, I remember her!" Percy exclaimed. "Daughter of Ceres, right? She almost skewered me during the war games once."

Hazel stifled a giggle. "She does leave a strong first impression."

"I'd say so," Reyna chimed in. "She's one of the strongest strategists in the Fourth." 

Reyna extended a hand to Nico, who  ducked down again to kiss her cheek the way he had Hazel’s, and then, surprisingly, did the same to Annabeth. The same genre of thought he'd had at Frank's arrival repeated itself, marking the moment that Jason realized—rather vividly—just how much he’d missed.

To top it off, once everyone had reintroduced themselves, and they thought nobody was paying attention, Reyna and Annabeth turned toward each other for a lightning-quick kiss.Yeah, he’d been out of contact for too long.

“So.”The voice brought him out of his thoughts and halted the idling conversation.Nico di Angelo stared him and the others down.“Sorry for calling you all here, but I didn’t think we should take any chances of… eavesdropping by discussing this over text.”

Leo let out a low whistle.“This is _demigod_ demigod business, then.I take it it goes deeper than a few stray werewolves?”

“Look… my father appeared to me,” Nico replied, shaking his head.“He doesn’t fully know what’s going on, and as a result, neither do I, but he thinks there’s something stirring in Tartarus, trying to get out.”He was fidgeting again.“For him to come out of the Underworld, rather than just calling me in… probably means that whatever it is, it might actually succeed.” 

The sunlight streaming through the window suddenly felt stale.Jason could’ve sworn his blood had turned reptilian.

“Could it be…” Percy trailed off, glancing between Annabeth and Nico.

_Kronos_, Jason’s brain supplied._Saturn_.

Nico shook his head again.“I don’t know.You should have weakened him enough to stop him from reforming for at least a few centuries, I think.But…”

Jason was beginning to suspect it wasn’t the sunlight that was losing its warmth.The longer Nico spoke, the colder the room seemed to become.The philodendrons in a hanging planter nearby were starting to look dehydrated.

“I know this is asking too much.Nobody should have to go through all that you guys have even once, and I know you have jobs and families now.”His gaze lingered on Percy Jackson for just a little too long.“You shouldn’t have to deal with… all of this,” he continued, and Jason wondered sadly if he was referring to this would-be quest or to himself, for interrupting their lives to bring them back here, back to New Rome.

The son of Hades looked back up again, fixing them all with a hardened black stare, but the philodendrons continued to wither in their pot.“Listen.I’m mostly here to warn you guys that things might… get bad.Soon.My father said I shouldn’t try to help him on my own this time.He didn’t say I couldn’t.”There was a familiar tone of challenge in his voice, daring any of them to doubt him, as though the understanding that this quest might be too much to ask didn’t extend to himself.“I won’t blame any of you if you choose not to join me, but I’m asking for help if you’re willing to give it.”The philodendrons shriveled to a pale brown crisp.

A moment’s silence.

Two.

  
Three.

  
Four.

Reyna hummed.“Personally, I’ve missed the adventure.”It was an obvious lie.Reyna had resigned from praetorship precisely because she’d had enough of those specific adventures, had retired from the Huntresses for the same reason, but she looked at Nico so warmly that Jason thought maybe she really _did_ mean it, even if just for him.

Hazel grasped Frank’s hand in one of hers and Nico’s in the other.“We’ve already started preparing here, but we'll get the reserves back into training.Nico, whatever happens, we’ll have an army for you.”

“That said,” Frank mused, “it might be a good time to contact Camp Half-Blood about this, too.”

Nico nodded like the thought hadn’t particularly occurred to him, and Jason was struck with the realization that the guy was more than likely completely unused to being at the head of a quest.Before getting saved from suffocating in a jar, everything he’d done in the Second Giant War had been done on his own, and usually in secrecy.After the jar, he’d never been tasked with much in the way of communication, unless you counted transporting the Athena Parthenos as sending a message.Which, to be fair, you probably could.

Annabeth nodded in agreement with Frank.“Aside from alerting them, it might also be a good time to get in touch with Rachel.”If anyone knew anything, of course it would be the Oracle.

Nico nodded in agreement, but then a silence hovered over the group for a little too long.

Leo fidgeted with a braided leather bracelet that encircled his wrist. 

“Honestly…,” he trailed off.“The Waystation is kind of in need of caretakers--Emmie and Josephine are getting older, and Georgie’s in school, now….”

Nico opened his mouth to reply, but Calypso spoke instead, sweeping her warm bronze hair straight back, away from her face.“We’ll help where we can.The Waystation is in Indianapolis, which isn't Colorado, per se, but it _is_ about two-thirds of the way between the west and east coasts.” Clearly she’d taken her time as a mortal teenager in a high school geography class seriously.“It’s a good point for communication, or for stops during travel.We’ll help.”

Leo broke into a grin.“Yeah, fine. She’s right.We’ll help.”

“I’m in, too,” Jason blurted out, surprised by how much he meant it.It was true, he liked living life pretending to be a regular mortal, free of the burdens of prophecies and quests and all those expectations, but something about Nico’s earlier words pierced him.He was still free of those expectations, because Nico di Angelo didn’t expect anything from him, and without the crushing pressure of responsibility, there was only Jason.And Jason found that he _wanted_ to take responsibility for this one.He had no mortal family, no close friends in the “real world”.There was nothing to keep him from doing this.More, he didn’t think he could return to life in an office cubicle knowing that his friends would be risking their lives to preserve his new sense of normalcy.

That left Piper and Percy, both of whom had been sitting in contemplative silence as the others spoke up.

Finally, Piper looked up.“I’m in.”

“Are you sure?” Jason muttered into her ear, too quiet for anyone else to hear.“You don’t have to, you know… your dad—”

“Is on set filming in another country for the next three months and another state for the two after that,” she reassured. Then, turning to Jason specifically,“I know I got distant because I wanted to spend time with him, but right now, there’s nothing stopping me.”She grabbed his hand briefly and squeezed, though Jason wasn’t wholly sure if it was to comfort him or herself.

Then, Percy Jackson sighed.

“I… I don’t know about me, you guys,” he managed, shaking his head.“I have a sister in elementary school now.I already put my mom through hell for four years… I don’t know if I should do that again.”

And Annabeth reached over to take one of his hands in both of hers.“That’s okay, Seaweed Brain.We don’t want you worrying your mom either.” She grinned gently.

Percy took a deep breath.“Sorry, guys.I’ll keep an eye on things in New York, but for now, this one isn’t for me.”

Nico nodded, more patient than Jason remembered him.“Sorry for having you come all the way out.I can shadow travel you back, if you want.” It was a slightly awkward offer, and Nico's face gave him away. He was at least a little uncomfortable, but he really did want to make it up to Percy.

The son of Poseidon shook his head, face lighting up in a grin.“Nah, man, you’re good.My car’s here anyway and I don’t think I ever want to shadow travel again,” he teased.“Iris Message me if shit hits the fan, though, okay?Promise me.”

Jason was pretty sure that the last time Percy Jackson had asked Nico to promise him something, Percy had been about to fall into Tartarus.

Nico’s response was the same now as it was then: “I… I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY all the kids are together! nico, baby, i'm so sorry for putting you through this. i'm sure it'll be fine to some extent.
> 
> this one is largely from jason's perspective, which means nico will probably be coming up next chapter. i promise you haven't seen the last of percy, yet, either.
> 
> i'm really liking the idea of nico growing into someone who's a little closer to his pre-life-ruining-trauma self, so i've decided to let him be a little happier and a little more invested in random interests than he is in-series (hello, anime expo).
> 
> as for jason, i think he's kind of... lost? he's definitely been enjoying life outside the realm of demigod apocalypse drama, especially after a certain near-death experience we'll touch on later, but i think he needs support and to be understood, both of which he'd be hard-pressed to find in the mortal world. also, yes, before exactly right now, he was under the impression that percy and annabeth were still together. boy ur in for a ride.
> 
> anyway, thank you all for reading! sorry that the length of time between chapters is increasing, but as the length of chapters themselves do so, i think it'll continue to be this way for a while. hope you're all resting and eating well in the meanwhile, and again, if you have any corrections or concerns, you can send them in to https://stygianswords.tumblr.com/ask


	9. War Strategy and Mythomagic Can't Be THAT Different, Can They?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sons of the Big Three do some catching up, and Nico gets by with a little help from his friends. It's not easy to prepare for a war when you don't know your opposition, after all.

The meeting disbanded slowly, until finally, only Percy, Jason, and Nico remained at that big table in Bombilo’s.Around them, New Roman life continued as usual.Legionnaires sat at tables alongside demigods long-retired from duty, drinking coffee or orange juice or picking at cinnamon toast.Nico’s influence had worn off of the room, apparently, because the sun had begun to feel like sun again, its light pouring through the high windows and filling the room with a pleasant warmth.The philodendrons were not so lucky.

Percy stretched, then stood, both hands on the table to push himself up.“I’ll walk you guys to wherever you’re staying on the way to my car.”A beat passed.“Where _are_ you staying, anyway?”

“One of my friends from the Legion is letting me couch surf,” Jason replied, and directed a glance at Nico, passing on the question.

He shrugged.“I wasn’t planning on going back yet, so…”

“So walk with us!”It wasn’t an invitation so much as an insistence.Ever since Croatia, Grace had developed a habit of trying to include Nico in everything.That is, until they’d stopped talking.

But Nico silently obliged, following the other two down the worn sidewalks of New Rome until Jason stopped in his tracks.

“Actually, Percy, when do you have to leave?”He seemed… disappointed, maybe?No, not quite.He was getting ready to miss one of his friends.

Percy shrugged a response, missing Jason’s tone, “Maybe by one if I want to hit the border of Utah tonight.”_And I do,_ came the implied continuation.

Jason seemed to appraise their options, pulling a phone from his jeans pocket and clicking it on to check the time.“That gives us about an hour and a half.I know we just had coffee, but you should eat before driving anyway.”He glanced between the other two.“Lunch?”

»»————-————««

Look.Nico understood that Percy had literally just said he didn’t want to shadow travel again.He was aware.But in the interest of time and momentarily getting out of Camp Jupiter, Percy gave in.

Nico took Percy’s right hand and Jason’s left, and soon he felt the cells that made up his being beginning to waver.His physical form dissipated, dissolving into his own shadow, and he felt Jason and Percy coming with him.And suddenly, they were no longer in New Rome.

Rather, they weren’t in their New Rome, the one where both Jason and Percy had served as praetors, the New Rome that Hazel and Frank had saved from Tarquin.This New Rome was hazier, darker.It wasn’t nighttime, but there was little to no light.It was as though a black overlay had been placed upon the usually brilliant city.

Oh, and also, it was empty.

At least, it was empty of the living.The lares still remained, dimly.They were more tied to the world of the living than the dead, perhaps, but that didn’t make them alive.They were still ghosts, and traces of their presence were still visible in this colder, darker version of their home.

He took a step, pulling the other two boys behind him.Another.Another.He moved at what he thought was a normal speed, but each step seemed to take them leagues, the scenery around them looking rather like the view out the window of a car going ninety-five.There were no hills, no obstacles, or maybe they simply passed through them.Nico had done this enough to know that if he stopped, he’d be in in the same dark-overlay version of whatever place he’d stopped in.Sometimes it was at the top of a mountain, but he’d never walked on an incline.Once, he’d realized he was at the bottom of the ocean, and quickly had to move on before he slipped back into the regular world and drowned or got crushed by the water pressure.That was before he’d landed himself in New Zealand by accident.

But he didn’t stop on this short trip—he wasn’t entirely sure what would happen to his guests if he did, and he wasn’t particularly willing to take chances on their safety for the sake of something as simple as a lunch outing.

Finally.He’d really only been walking a few minutes, but he was starting to develop a familiar drowsiness that let him know he’d gone miles.He stepped out, bringing them out of a pool of darkness gathered at the base of a building in Berkeley, and shielded his mouth with the back of his hand as he yawned.

Percy shuddered when they emerged, but he eventually came around to raise a half-teasing, half-suspicious eyebrow at him.“Pizza?”

Nico stared back.“Uh, yeah.”

“So no _this isn’t real Italian food_ spiel?”

That sounded like an awfully Annabeth chastisement.

He rolled his eyes.“I’ve lived in America for, what, sixty years longer than you?I’m entitled to my right to like pizza.” 

Percy adopted an expression that let him know he was picking apart the comment, but it was gone as soon as it surfaced.He was probably searching for an edge in his tone, a sign that Nico was about to snap at him.Fair enough.Years ago, thinking about his time in the Lotus Hotel would have stirred up the bitterness that’d been ever-present in the pit of his stomach._How can I belong at Camp Half Blood,_ he’d wonder, _when I don’t even belong in this century?_It used to sting, but that pain was eased by time and Hazel and having friends (what a thought!) and, for a while, by Will Solace.But he shook himself back to reality and followed the others to the counter of the hole-in-the-wall pizzeria.

Soon after arriving, the three had planted themselves on vinyl-cushioned stools around a metal table, paper plates laid out before them.Nico took a second to survey his current situation.Here they were, the sons of Greek mythology’s Big Three, sitting in what had to be the smallest pizza place in the Bay Area.It sounded like the beginning of a joke.

Around a mouthful of pepperoni, Jason interrupted Nico’s thoughts.“Do you guys still talk to anyone else from the Camps?”

Percy beamed—that caught his attention.“I still visit for a couple weeks every summer and winter.Clarisse is still around as a counselor, too!She’s… _surprisingly_ good with kids.Uh, I think I remember Malcom Pace being there last time, too?And Katie Gardner.”

Jason smiled at that.

“I think Lou Ellen still hangs around Camp Half Blood full-time?” Nico added.“But I’m not really sure. She's definitely around in summer.”She’d gotten really good at shadow traveling, and since then, her whereabouts were generally kind of a mystery, but she texted him pretty frequently.“What about you?”

The son of Jupiter shook his head.“I lost touch with… everyone, pretty much.I’m lucky Nathan’s even letting me stay with him in New Rome, because we haven’t really spoken in ages.I don’t know, guys.The mortal world is kinda boring, but I like it.”

“It’s not so bad, right?What are you doing for work?” Percy asked.

“I'm a paralegal. It's mostly just a lot of paperwork,” Jason said lightly.Percy made a face in response, and Jason laughed.“I’m guessing you went into a different field.”

“Gods, yes,” Percy confirmed.“I’m a veterinary assistant.I get to help with handling horses and sea animals.”He shoved half a slice of pizza into his mouth.Nico noted that he didn’t mention the writing courses he was taking, but he wasn’t totally surprised—he only knew about them because Annabeth had let it slip into a conversation last month.

“Putting your demigod powers to good use, then?”When Percy nodded, Jason turned to Nico.“What about you?You could be the best homicide detective there ever was, you know,” he said, almost deadpan enough to take him seriously.“Most investigators don’t get to talk to the victims.”

Nico only snorted half a laugh, but he was genuinely amused.“I can’t work because my immigration papers would say I’m eighty-seven,” he replied with a shrug.Then, remembering another dilemma in the realm of legal paperwork, “Also, I don’t know where they are.So I just watch a lot of Netflix, usually, unless Hades needs me to do something.”

Percy shrugged.“Well, you look pretty good for your age.I had more grey hair than you do now when I was thirteen.”

Nico rolled his eyes so hard he could have given himself a headache, but when Jason looked on in confusion, he explained: “When Percy and Annabeth were thirteen, they each had a stint where they, oh, you know, took on Atlas’ burden and literally supported the entire sky.”Jason choked on his soda in surprise.“Right?When they came back, they had matching silver streaks in their hair.”

“Jeez,” Jason rasped, washing down his Sprite with… more Sprite.

Percy shook his head and ripped his pizza crust in half.“It sucked when it was happening, but it was kind of cool that we got to match for a few months.That quest, though—“

“Don’t worry about it,” Nico interrupted.He didn’t want to hear any more apologies about that week.

Luckily (or maybe not), Jason changed the subject.“Okay, wait, so—speaking of Annabeth—she?Reyna?”

Percy’s melancholy returned.He’d been like that since leaving Tartarus, Nico was pretty sure.Every once in a while, he’d get quieter.Not as sharp, not as angry, but not as enthusiastic either.There was a new weight to his presence.

“We broke up a few years ago,” he explained.Shaking his head in something like embarrassment, he continued, “It didn’t really seem like something to announce in the group chat.”

Jason nodded empathetically.“I get that.”He and Piper hadn’t told anyone when they’d broken up, either.Percy and Annabeth had heard about it from Grover, and Percy had accidentally let it slip to Nico later.He assumed the others put the pieces together when Piper moved to somewhere that was decidedly not Pasadena, California.

“What happened between you two, anyway?”Percy was the one that asked, but if he was being honest, Nico had wondered about that a bit too.The couple had seemed pretty happy, before the breakup.Hadn’t they even gone to California in the first place so that they could go to school together?But things change, he supposed.

It was Jason’s turn to smile sadly.“She had an entire history of memories between us that never happened.There were things like our first date, our first kiss, that she remembered and I didn’t because I was just… never there.It was fine when we were distracted by the war, but after that… we had too much time to think about why we wouldn’t work.There were, uh, other things, too, but….”He shook his head, but Nico caught his hesitation.“What about Annabeth?What happened there?”

Percy fell silent—not that he had been talking previously, but his manner quieted as well.He completely stilled for a gap of several seconds, which was a pretty rare occurrence for him.His gaze was suddenly far away as he considered the question.

“After we made it to the Doors,” he started, “we never wanted to be away from each other again.”He let out a short, dry laugh.“Going to New Rome University meant we could be together pretty much all the time, and we liked it that way, but it just… wasn’t good for us.”

Confession time; Annabeth had told Nico her own side of the story already.Over the past couple years of her relationship with Reyna, given Nico’s frequent visits to both Reyna and Hazel in New Rome, of course they’d begun talking more.She’d seemed embarrassed to open up about it, at first, but after a while, she seemed to realize that the only non-Percy human alive that would be able to even remotely relate to the experience of literally walking through Hell was Nico.After that, they’d grown close over midnight Iris Messages and empty stares and occasionally holding each others’ hair when one or the other thought they could still smell that thick, sulfuric air, still taste the rotten burn of the Phlegethon.

Tartarus was what happened to them. 

Annabeth still cried in her sleep every once in a while because, in her dreams, the world was empty, and she was alone, and sometimes when she closed her eyes, she was afraid to open them again, afraid that she’d find that emptiness before her in the waking world as well.When she and Percy had started college, there would be periods where she wouldn’t sleep at all, and on those nights, Percy would stay up with her, all the lights in their apartment turned on.The fear of losing him was so ever-present in her mind and so unbearable that, at some point or another, even being in separate rooms was impossible to tolerate.She had worked through a lot of that over nine years and countless weekly sessions with a daughter of Hermes and a couple of prescriptions, but it never left her completely.

Annabeth never talked about everything Nico knew Percy must have gone through in the aftermath of the Second Giant War, but Nico didn’t mind the lack of explanation on Percy’s personal hell.If anything, it wasn’t Annabeth’s business to tell him, and Nico respected the art of keeping others’ secrets.

And so he wasn’t going to mention out loud that he knew one half of the story, nor was he going to ask for the other.If Percy wanted them to know, he’d tell them himself.Instead of speaking, Nico simply nodded, training a sympathetic stare on the son of the sea god.

Jason blew out a breath, shook his head.“I can’t imagine that.Sorry, man.”

Percy ran a hand over his curly hair.“Nah, dude, it’s good.I mean, it was for the best.”

Nico grimaced, because there weren’t really the words to explain the level of _yeah, you’re probably right, but _**_gods_**_ that sucks_ that the situation warranted.“Even so.I get that we’re kind of late for this, but if you need anything, you have all our numbers.”Jason nodded beside him.Nico quickly continued, “If you don’t feel like talking to us, I can always try and track down Dante Alighieri, too.I haven’t spoken with him in a while, and to be fair, some of his takes were questionable at best, but I’m sure I can find him again.”

“Dante Ah-li-g—what?Who?”Percy shook his head.“Never mind,” he said, and waved them off.“Seriously, guys.It’s fine.I'm fine.I have a mom and a stepdad and a baby sister, and I actually have time to spend with them now.Life is pretty good.”His face adopted a grin and he leaned back, settling his hands on the edge of the stool behind him for balance, suddenly becoming much more… Percy.

Nico felt the shadow of a smile creep up on him.He didn’t push further.

Jason clapped a hand on Percy’s shoulder.“If you change your mind, you have every single one of us.I mean, I know we—other than Annabeth and Nico, we can’t imagine what that was like, but we’re here for you if you need it.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Any time.Seriously, both of you, I know I’ve been out of touch—“

“You really have, dude, we missed you.”

“—but you can call me for anything.”

Nico shot him the ghost of a grin.“Isn’t that what I just did?”

»»————-————««

With their lunches finished and an hour to spare, the three young men continued catching up at the table, occasionally crunching on the ice at the bottom of their cups to feel like they still had a reason to be inside the pizzeria.Nico had to admit he’d missed these two, and couldn’t help but feel a sting at the realization he likely wouldn’t be seeing Percy again for what could be months.

It wasn’t a crush thing.He really had gotten over that, but in the months following the Second Giant War, and in the years after, during Percy’s biannual Camp Half Blood visits, Nico allowed himself to believe they’d genuinely become something like friends._Like,_ at least.

(If he dug deep enough, there was always a familiar anxiety, the knowledge that Percy had spent years mistrusting him, the sneaking suspicion that he might not trust him even now.He usually talked himself off of that particular train of thought, though.Usually.)

But even with their past, Percy was a good guy, and Annabeth had loved him, and Nico had grown to love Annabeth, and maybe there would always be something in him that wanted Percy around regardless.Case in point: he was going to miss him.

“Do you guys think you’ll come out to New York again?”Speak of the devil and the devil speaks back, right?Hm.No, that wasn’t the right expression.

Jason seemed to think about the question, then shrugged.“Now that you mention it, it’d be a good idea.”He turned to Nico with a grin, “We could make it a road trip!”

Nico crunched on his ice.“We could.”

“You haven’t moved, have you?Are you still in LA?”

“I am.Downtown, kinda close to Hollywood.”

Percy opened his mouth like he was about to ask how Nico could possibly afford to live in downtown Los Angeles with no income, but then he closed it, likely putting the pieces together.Jason, on the other hand, didn’t have the same reaction, probably because he’d known Hades as Pluto first, primarily the god of riches rather than the dead.

Nico was pretty lucky, he supposed, because Hades had a practically infinite source of wealth, and owned enough banks that Nico was able to have a credit card without having a social security number.Would it have been nice to have that kind of access as a homeless, family-less ten-year-old?Yeah, absolutely.But Hades had been trying to make up for that ever since.He wasn’t great at being a dad, because he’d never had any real experience, but he was trying.Nico could appreciate that enough not to be bitter, but gods, the children of the Olympians all needed access to therapy.

Jason, meanwhile, seemed to have perked up.“Dude, you’re like a forty-five minute drive out—“

“If you don’t count traffic.”

“—from me.First of all, we should hang out more, but I can also totally pick you up if you want to actually go to New York.”Then, an _oh shit_ kind of realization came over the son of Jupiter’s face.“I mean, unless you want to go separately with Will?Or I can drive you both.”

A scowl claimed Nico’s expression before he had time to school it back into neutrality.Jason raised his eyebrows, and Percy pushed himself forward again, leaning in over the table.

“No way,” Percy said.“You too?”

“I was fourteen!Things don’t always work out when you’re a stupid teenager.”

The words themselves were bitter, but Jason picked up on the lightness in his tone and took his opportunity, shrugging in mock innocence as he quipped, “I wouldn’t say you were _that_ stupid.”

Nico raised an eyebrow.“You sure about that, Grace?You were the only living person to know about Percy, weren’t you?”

“Hey!”Percy leaned back again in mock indignation, crossing his arms over his chest.“First of all, I am a fucking _catch_.Uh, no pun intended?But second,” he turned to Jason, “you knew and I didn’t?”

Jason threw his hands up in surrender.“Wasn’t my secret to tell!”

Nico tilted his head, and fixed him with a look that he knew was probably a little bit too serious.“It really wasn’t, actually, so thank you for keeping it.”

Jason, looking a little off-balance—he clearly hadn’t expected the tonal shift—shrugged yet again, this time smaller, almost sheepishly.“Of course, Nico,” he replied.His voice was quieter now, too, gentler.He started to mutter something that couldn’t quite be made out, but then he stopped himself.“When did you and Will… are you okay?”

Nico tugged the rubber band out of his hair, brushed the escaped strands back, and retied it.“It’s been a while now.Again, it didn’t seem like something to text to the group chat, but I’m okay.We just both had some misconceptions about each other.”

It was true enough.

Jason nodded slowly, but Nico suspected both of the others knew there was more.

»»————-————««

They dropped Percy off at his car at 12:45, leaving him fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. 

“Will you let me pay you back for gas, at least?You drove all the way across the country,” Nico insisted.

Percy gave a laugh, tossing an arm across Jason’s shoulders in something like a hug.Jason smiled lightheartedly and squeezed him back.“You offered to shadow travel me in the first place, remember?I like driving.”

“What about hotel costs for the nights?”Questing was expensive.

“I’ll charge Mr. D on Venmo.”

Nico made a face.“You better.”

The son of Poseidon slid into the driver’s seat of a fifteen-year-old Prius with familiar hoof imprints in the hood.“Let me know next time you’re on the East Coast, alright?You gotta see Camp Half Blood now, there’s a whole town where the big clearing behind the Big House used to be.”

“I’ll hit you up.See you around, man,” Jason and Percy clapped their hands together once more for good measure, then came apart and ended in a fist bump.

Nico opted to wave instead.“See you next time.”

Percy lifted a hand before he closed the car door and took off.

Jason eventually tore his eyes away from the car slowly disappearing into the afternoon, stirring up dust behind it.“Let me walk you to wherever you’re staying.”

“I can handle a ten-minute walk by myself, you know.”

“I know that.I want to spend more time with you.”

He hesitated; one, two, three seconds.Finally, “Okay.”And he took a step.Jason followed suit.

It was an almost-comfortable silence for a few minutes.

Then, Jason observed, “We’re headed toward Temple Hill.”

Nico nodded like it should have been obvious, because he was pretty sure it should have.

Realization dawned over Jason’s features.“Oh, no.”

“What?”

“No.You are not sleeping inside a temple.”

Nico thought sleeping in a temple was perfectly reasonable.“It’ll be easier for my father to reach me there if he has to.Besides, I used t—“

Jason let out the most exasperated sigh Nico had ever heard.“If he can reach you in an apartment in LA, he can reach you in an apartment in New Rome.Can’t you stay with Reyna and Annabeth?Hazel?I can ask Nathan if you can stay with me.”

“Seriously, it’s fine.I promise I don’t do this every time I visit anymore, but there’s a reason for it.”

The son of Jupiter scrunched his nose, causing his glasses to slip down just a few millimeters, and it occurred to Nico that Cabin One at Camp Half Blood had essentially been a temple with a pile of blankets in it when Jason had moved in.He knew firsthand the discomfort of sleeping on a cool, dusty, marble-tiled floor.

But then, a cool marble floor wouldn’t be the worst place Nico di Angelo had had to sleep in.He supposed he could count his blessings.

“Are you going to… be there the entire time we’re in New Rome?”

He made a sort of noncommittal gesture.“At least until I know Hades is done talking.”

Jason made a face like he didn’t like that answer, but he didn’t protest.

Nico cleared his throat awkwardly after too many seconds of silence.“The last time I saw you in person, you were in college, right?Is that still happening?”

Jason was beaming.“I graduated!It’s kind of nice to be done with school and everything, but I actually kind of miss it.I mean, maybe if I’d been dealing with school all my life, I’d be over it, but going from the Legion to sitting in class and learning about, like, Dionysus’ cults, or getting to read about the history of rock and roll—it’s sorta cool.”

When Nico didn’t immediately respond, he blurted out, “You could try it, you know.They have some really neat courses available now, and it’s a good opportunity to meet new people.”

“I don’t know if ‘meeting new people’ is really on the itinerary for me these days.”

Jason’s face fell.“Nico... did something happen?”

But Nico brushed him off with a grin as they reached his father’s temple.“Nothing new and nothing for you to be worried about, but thank you for walking me,” he answered.

“I—yeah.Yeah, man, anytime.Should I leave you alone?”Jason looked… not nervous, but uncharacteristically unsure of himself.This was a side of him that he didn’t show when he was surrounded by other people, but Nico recognized it from times it had slipped out in other one-on-one conversations.

So, without really thinking about it, he reached out and traced his fingers over Jason’s arm the way he would Hazel’s or Reyna’s.“I’m going to be making a few calls, so you can stay, but I’m not going to be very entertaining.Nobody’s going to be mad if you want to go find Leo or Piper.”

Jason retained a little bit of that unsureness, but he seemed less outright worried, so that was going to have to be good enough.Finally, content seeped back into his countenance.“Alright, I'm gonna catch up with them, then.I’ll see you around.”

“Seems like you will.”

»»————-————««

One upside to having high, crystalline windows in your local Roman temples is that the facets of those crystalline windows catch the afternoon sunlight and turn it into rainbows without the assistance of any kind of mist.Which makes it much easier to call people when you can’t use things like FaceTime.

“O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering.”He pressed a drachma into one of the multicolored spots, and it disappeared like it had gone through a coin slot at a parking meter.“Lou Ellen Blackstone.”

The space around the rainbow speck shimmered, then warped, and then he was face-to-face with the daughter of Hecate.

“Nico!I was wondering who would be calling me during class.”

He kicked himself mentally.Of course.Time zones.She taught the Camp Half Blood campers about Mist manipulation from three until just before sundown on Wednesdays.

“Shit, sorry—uh, would you mind to call me back when you have a chance?I need to talk to you about something.”

Her face turned serious, and she glanced behind her.“Here, I can call a break for a minute—“She turned her attention away from him and to the small army of young teenagers that sat in the grass at her back.“Hey!Fifteen minute recess, everyone, I’ll be back.Feel free to keep practicing, but do not turn Alexei into a gecko again!”The crowd dispersed, and Lou Ellen turned her attention back to the Iris Message.

“My father showed up in my apartment.”She raised both eyebrows.He continued, “There’s something rising from Tartarus.”

“Oh my gods—“

“It hasn’t woken yet,” he added quickly, “at least not fully, but will you let me know if anything starts happening at Camp Half Blood?Percy is keeping an eye out too, and Calypso and Leo are going to be covering Indiana, but—“

“Of course, Nico.Of course.Are there any other details I should be passing along to Chiron?”

He shook his head in frustration.“We really don’t know much right now.The Underworld kind of fights back when anything tries to leave that shouldn’t.So like, sometimes, Tantalus or Sisyphus or someone will try to escape the Fields of Punishment, and Hades will be able to figure it out based on the location of the strain, but this is… different, I suppose.I’m not sure why, but he doesn’t know what it is.”

“And this is different from the usual ‘monsters-reforming-after-whatever-amount-of-time’ thing?”

“That’s kind of like flour going through a sieve, but this is more like, I don’t know, something trying to break the sieve.”

Lou Ellen nodded in understanding, her cloud of platinum blonde curls bobbing with the movement.“Got you.I’ll have Chiron and Mr. D on alert and get the Hecate cabin working on magical reinforcements.”

“Thank you.Good luck over there, okay? Be safe.”

“Of course, babe.I’m gonna get back to my class now, but talk soon?”

“I’ll text you tomorrow."

“Okay.Love you!”And she waved her hand through the image and disappeared.

»»————-————««

As soon as the rainbow reflection showed itself again, Nico pressed another drachma into it.

“O goddess, accept my offering.”The air started to waver again.With a deep breath, he requested, “Thalia Grace.”

Moments later, Jason’s no-longer-older sister appeared before him.

“di Angelo?” Her eyes were piercing, even through the Iris Message.

“Hi, Thalia.”

»»————-————««

That night, after having swept and dusted the temple of Pluto, Nico tucked himself away into a guarded corner next to a pillar and stared up at a ceiling that was carefully set with skulls and opalescent gems.

Both camps were preparing to defend against another attack.Percy was headed back to New York to keep watch over Mount Olympus, and in a few days, Leo and Calypso would be back at the Waystation, covering the Great Lakes.The Huntresses would be on the move internationally as usual, and Thalia had agreed to keep him updated should they encounter anything extra out-of-the-ordinary (whatever ordinary meant when you were an immortal archer who had been fifteen for over ten years now).Additionally, the Huntresses had contacts within the Amazons, whose reach was perhaps even greater than the Legion’s.

He breathed in for ten seconds. Held in the air for another ten. Exhaled for another ten. Repeated the process a few times for good measure until he felt his heart rate slow.

If this were a game of chess, he’d think he had pretty sufficiently set up the board to protect his king.But he’d always been more for card games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god the way i want to just cart them all off to therapy. demigod life is hard, bro.
> 
> the friendships nico has formed that lasted throughout these years are going to end up being a pretty big focal point in this fic, so you'll be seeing lots of hazel, lou ellen, and reynabeth. and jason, of course. oh jason, sweet boy, i promise i'll be talking about your near-death experiences. i don't know how you continue to be so brave.
> 
> i've typed too much here lmao. thank you for making it this far! hope this chapter was satisfactory, and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can direct them to https://stygianswords.tumblr.com/ask


	10. Sleeping for Thousands of Years Builds an Appetite, Apparently

_It has taken me so many years to regain even this much form._

Nico shuddered.It was pitch-black.The familiar feeling of his bones being ground to dust while his muscles pulled away from their ligaments burned through him.He was dying, but not really.His soul wasn’t being severed neatly from his body by the sickle of Thanatos.It was being devoured, ripped and sucked away from him, becoming nothing as it came into contact with the voice of those terrible hands.

_I lack the strength I once had, but even this is enough.Waking is difficult, but sleeping is ravenous.Do you understand, Nico di Angelo?The death trance that left you ruined in a matter of days… that is how I have lived for millennia._

He wanted to scream, really, but the sound disappeared as it left his mouth.He realized, somewhere, that sound could not exist in this atmosphere.Even the voice could not truly be heard.It simply appeared in his head.

_Will you be my next meal?_

The whine in his throat didn’t make any noise either.

_You should not have escaped me the first time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think i've given away who our big villain is this time around, so all i really have to say is: Oh No.
> 
> this one isn't much for subtlety.


	11. Maybe Don't Camp Out in a Temple That Features Bones as Decor

Nico’s phone read 3:33 when he woke up suffocating.

His eyes were burning, his lungs were being eroded, and all around him was the grotesque atmosphere of Tartarus’ body. Above him, a gas swirled, some sickly combination of yellow-green and purple, and an acidic, slimy fluid dripped occasionally from the... ceiling? Sky? Whatever it was that stretched out all those miles over his head. Nico gagged.  When he tried to steady himself, his hands were pricked a million times by miniature shards of shattered glass.He pulled them away reflexively, sure they’d come back bloody.

They didn’t.

The floor was smooth.

He was in Pluto’s temple.

He _was_ bleeding, though, if the fresh stain on the sleeve of his beloved Basquiat shirt was anything to go by—and he received his confirmation when he dabbed the back of his hand to his nose.A steady stream of blood dripped down over his cupid’s bow.

It was about now that he noticed he was still shaking, breath still too fast and too heavy, hands unable to form a tight fist.For a moment, he tried to shadow travel somewhere more familiar—his apartment, Reyna and Annabeth’s, the Underworld itself might have been fine.No such luck.His energy was drained. 

So here he was, hyperventilating on the floor of a temple to a god that was not quite his father.

Alone.Again.He covered his face with his hands and curled into a ball.

It felt a little bit too much like those days in the jar, or maybe like those days after he left Camp Half Blood for the first time.Or the second.Or, you know, the third.

He inhaled for ten seconds, held his breath for another ten, exhaled another ten, flexed his fingers and curled them back into a fist, repeated these actions until it seemed like he was beginning to come down.The inside temple was close to pitch black, but it was warm enough that, eventually, he stopped shivering.Slowly, he unfurled his body, letting his feet slide away on the smooth floor so that his knees were not pressed so tightly to his chest.

It knew his name.

It knew him. 

And, apparently, he’d escaped its clutches once before.

Understanding hit him like a fist to the stomach.

He staggered to his feet, then, still dizzy, and had to lean against a marble column to stand. He tried again to dissolve into the darkness. Was it too uniform for him at this level of energy? Were there no shadows to drop into? He cursed under his breath, pushed himself off of the pillar, and, holding the bridge of his nose, forced his legs to carry him outside, into the night. The dark was so complete that, for the entire duration of the walk, he wasn't sure whether the black spots that formed in his vision whenever he was about to faint were present, or if he was simply having trouble discerning the night from itself.

It was Reyna who answered the door when he finally pulled himself up the stairs to their apartment entrance.When she laid eyes on him, she instantly awakened, standing up straighter, her eyes wide at the sight of his bloody face and shaking hands.“Nico?”

  
  
He was going to be sick.“I have to go to Camp Half Blood,” he breathed, a weight heavy in his lungs.“Annabeth shouldn’t go on this quest.She shouldn’t leave New Rome.”His vision went blurry, and his ears blew out like he’d accidentally shadow traveled to a much higher altitude, but somewhere, he was pretty sure he heard his name in Reyna’s voice.

»»————-————««

He woke up on his side on a familiar linoleum floor—he didn't know how much later—and promptly flung himself upright to vomit into Reyna’s toilet.Then, he choked at the burn in the back of his throat.

_It’s just acid_, he reminded himself.Just bile.Not sulfuric air.Not the Phlegethon.

Reyna was crouched next to him, then, her hand trailing along his spine, sometimes scratching gently near his shoulder blades.She’d tucked his hair safely behind his ears and was saying something, but it took him a while to comprehend it as _it’s okay_, uttered soothingly and repeatedly.He retched again and emitted a low whine. _It's okay_, he heard again. He wanted his stomach to shadow travel itself out of his body when he threw up for the second time, but after that and a sufficient amount of gagging and coughing, he slumped against the wall.

“Feel better?” Reyna asked.

Nico’s only reply was a tired nod.

“Do you think you can stand?”

Another nod.“How did I get here?”

“I carried you,” she said, with a tone that implied a _duh_ appended to the end of the sentence.

“Ah, sorry….”

  
  
“It’s not a problem,” she assured.“Come on, let’s get you up.”

With Reyna’s hand under his elbow and one hand braced against the wall, Nico made his way to his feet and, then, to the sink to rinse out his mouth.The glass jar to the right held three toothbrushes, and he plucked out the green one, squeezed a generous amount of toothpaste onto the bristles, and started brushing furiously.The sooner he could rid himself of the burning sensation, the better. Reyna offered him mouthwash, but he cringed at the acidity the moment it hit his tongue and he had to spit it out then, opting to brush his teeth a second time instead.

With his mouth successfully cleaned out, he retreated to the cool haven of the shower.Reyna turned the bathtub on to start the water heater while Nico pulled his lightly bloodied shirt over his head and dropped it over the top of the shower door. The rest of his clothes followed suit. Reyna knocked lightly on the glass when it was safe to turn on the water, and he did, and the bathtub stopped running.

Halfway through rinsing Annabeth’s geranium-scented shampoo out of his hair, he started feeling dizzy again and had to sit down, but that was okay, really, because Reyna was still in the room, somewhere just outside the small rectangle of space he occupied, and Annabeth was sleeping peacefully, and Hazel was safe, and none of his friends felt close to death, and he was here, in an apartment and not bleeding out at the bottom of a pit that should be bottomless.

Eventually, he turned the water off.Before he had to ask, a towel appeared draped over the top of the frosted glass of the shower door.

“Thanks,” Nico mumbled.

  
  
“Of course,” Reyna answered. She slipped out of the bathroom to give him space to change into a hoodie and pair of basketball shorts that had undoubtedly been abandoned in Annabeth's laundry basket by one Percy Jackson, back when he'd been the one that lived here.

»»————-————««

“What the hell do you mean, _I can’t go on the quest with you_?”Annabeth Chase was sitting upright in bed, wearing a set of blue floral-printed pajamas, but none of that made her any less intimidating than she would have been with a knife in the palm of her hand.“You gathered us all in New Rome and dramatically asked us to help fight this mysterious force and now you want me to _not go_?”With her pale curls mussed into a halo around her, illuminated by the cool light of the nearby desk lamp, she looked a bit like an angry ghost.

Luckily for Nico, he had plenty of experience with ghosts.And with irritated Annabeth Chases.He didn’t flinch.The indignation in her voice was a thin shield for concern and a desire to protect, and everyone in the room knew it.

“An—listen!I know that it’s common for monsters to just _know_ demigods’ names, but it wasn’t just that.It mentioned meeting me a first time.It told me I shouldn’t have been able to escape it.”

Reyna, perched at the foot of the bed, one leg folded under her, rubbed at her temples.“And because we know it’s something from the pit…”

“If Nico met it there, chances are, it knows me too,” Annabeth filled in with a sigh.Deflated, she turned to Nico.“I mean, we knew this was a possibility.”

He returned her gaze.“But we didn’t know it was so—“

“—probable,” she finished.Her jaw clenched the way it did when she was thinking, strategizing, analyzing.And then, hesitantly, “Nico… I don’t want to ask this.Put that on the record.But... how sure are you that it was a prophetic dream?”

He drew back, into the familiar space of an area just beyond the reach of light, eyeing her warily.“What do you mean?”

She dropped her face into her hands for a moment, and, with a sigh, rubbed her eyes and pushed her hair back.“Neeks—look, I’m sorry, but I still have dreams about... my quest, and the curses, and even... not the pit as in the place, but its god.They speak to me in the dreams, sometimes, and sometimes it does sound an awful lot like what you’re describing.”Her face twisted up in a combination of dread and sympathy.“All I’m saying is, it could have been another nightmare.”

And he knew, on some level or another, that that could have been it —he’d woken up screaming and sick because of Tartarus before.In fact, he’d avoided sleeping and eating on the _Argo II_ in part because he hadn’t wanted the Seven to see him like that.And then there was the fact that, technically, he’d never had a prophetic dream in the years prior to this one.Every time something massive and evil was stirring, it was a quest for someone else; he just helped from behind the scenes, working with whatever information his father gave him.So then, how did he know what a prophetic dream felt like?

He didn’t.

But he did know what his normal dreams felt like, knew his nightmares even better, and knew his flashbacks like the back of his fucking hand.

And this was none of those.He padded forward again and sat, cross-legged, on the girls’ bed.

“I’ve never had anything like that before,” he said firmly.“I didn’t know the voice, but the dream gave me the same feeling as the ones I had about the hands.It—”He shook his head.“It wasn’t like my other dreams.”

Reyna, who had been listening carefully, with the same analytical look on her face that Annabeth had worn earlier, spoke up.“The nosebleed wasn’t normal, either,” she observed.“You only ever get those when you’ve been using your powers too much.”She cast a calculating look in her girlfriend’s direction, and Nico was pretty sure they had a full conversation in the few seconds of quiet that followed.

Annabeth sighed. "I know, I just...." The sentence went unfinished. She  shuffled herself closer and then reached out to pull Nico in close, tucking the top of his head under her chin.“We’ve got a lot to deal with this time, don't we?”There was the hint of a laugh in her voice, but it was shaky enough that it could have been equal parts sob, too.

Nico clumsily uncrossed his legs and circled his arms around her, and when he collapsed on his side, he brought her with him.When her fingers twitched against his hair, he pressed his face to her neck with his eyes squeezed shut. He felt the mattress sink as Reyna sat beside them.

"It... it'll be okay," he whispered unconvincingly. Then, forcing steel and certainty into his tone, he repeated himself, "It'll be okay. Just... remember that you can stay here. Or come back here. I don't want..."

"I know," she whispered, and suddenly  Reyna was there, too, undoubtedly at Annabeth’s back, but every once in a while, she reached over her girlfriend to touch Nico's arm or shoulder blade or hair.

At some point or another, Annabeth knocked out again, having tired herself out trying not to cry.It was then that Nico finally stopped tracing circles into her back with his thumb, and the hand that had been preoccupied doing that sought out one of Reyna’s.She accepted a single reassuring squeeze before pulling away to drape her arm over Annabeth’s body, her hand resting on Nico’s upper arm.

They forgot to turn the lamp off before they, too, fell asleep.

»»————-————««

Nico woke up alone for the second time that day, but instead of terrified in the cool temple of Pluto, he was clutching a pillow to his chest, and someone had tucked the fluffy duvet neatly around him.Not a progression he could really complain about.

He rubbed his face against the pillow until he felt awake enough to think.

Camp Half Blood.He had to leave for Camp Half Blood today.He bit down the urge to groan—he’d’ve really preferred stay in bed all day.Scratch that, he would’ve preferred to stay in bed indefinitely, until the apocalypse decided to stay in bed, too, to give it a rest, to come back in another few centuries.

Instead of groaning, he yawned, but he also managed to extract himself from the sweet embrace of Annabeth’s bed.

He stumbled over a knife’s leather sheath on his way into the hallway.

The girls’ apartment was exactly the kind of disaster you’d expect from an Athenian architect and a Roman praetor living together.Most of the apartment was decorated in white, cool-toned neutrals, and blue (aside from being Percy’s favorite color, it seemed to be Annabeth’s), but then there were things like Reyna’s big, warm-looking walnut desk, her wine-colored kitchen appliances.The closet was divided in two and neatly arranged, with Reyna’s things organized by frequency of use and Annabeth’s carefully placed into a color gradient, but a large bow and an empty quiver sat atop their shoe rack.Annabeth’s drawing desk, pushed up against a window in the living room, was covered in sheets of carefully-drawn blueprints, but there was leather armor heaped on the chair that went with it.Meanwhile, that walnut desk of Reyna’s was tucked into a corner of the bedroom.The drawers held methodically ordered files and meticulously preserved ancient texts, but its surface was home to a half-melted golden eagle and the silver arrows that belonged to the quiver in the closet.Corners of rooms were littered with (usually sheathed) swords and javelins of Imperial gold or celestial bronze.Even the bathroom cabinets were stocked with unicorn draught and ambrosia as part of an assortment of first-aid items.

All of that is to say, it was easy to trip over chest-plates or shields or helmets if you weren’t careful enough, and if you were care_less_ enough, you could lose a toe.

It was a calculated risk, but one that he was willing to take.

In the living room, Reyna and Annabeth were sitting crosslegged on the couch with a bowl of grapes between them.Papers were spread out over the coffee table, and each girl was rifling through a collection, sometimes furiously transcribing in margins or separate notebooks.They didn’t look up when Nico entered the room, but he wasn’t sure if it was because they were particularly engrossed or because he was exceptionally good at not being noticed.

He cleared his throat softly in an attempt not to startle them by speaking too suddenly, and then greeted, “Morning.”

Reyna looked up immediately, but even while Annabeth lifted her head and muttered a greeting in return, she couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from the page before her.

“Did you sleep well?” Reyna asked.With a slight smirk, she added, “Lie to me and the dogs will know.”

He couldn’t quite suppress a smile as he nodded.“Thanks for taking care of me.Have you eaten already?”

The momentary glance she cast toward the grapes told him everything he needed to know.

He heaved a sigh.“Jesus, you guys, it’s, like—”A glance at the clock.“—one already.”Leave it to the geniuses to forget about proper nutrition.

It was when he started toward the kitchen that Annabeth spoke up for real, having finished reading the page she had been working on.“Nico, it’s fine, we can grab someth—”

“Nope,” he interrupted, waving a dismissive hand in her direction.“I woke you up at like four in the morning, and Reyna had to make sure I didn’t get vomit in my hair.I’m making you lunch.”

“What can I do to—”It was Reyna this time, managing to divert her attention from whatever she’d been mapping out on her notebook for long enough to offer to help cook, only to be interrupted as well.

“No.Continue your afternoon.”

The girls shared a glance he couldn’t quite read, but neither of them argued, and Annabeth, at least, did return to work, muttering over the thin drawing paper and thick, decades-old parchment, occasionally glancing at her phone.

Meanwhile, Nico raided their kitchen.An avocado, two mangoes, a papaya, and a bunch of bananas occupied the counter.The fridge held eggs, a carton of oat milk, a package of ground beef, some kind of squash, and not-one-but-two heads of lettuce, alongside a truly ridiculous amount of grapes and—_yes_, cherry tomatoes.Now _that_, he could work with.There was no ricotta, which was a shame, but they’d live.Upon further inspection, they did have a block of parmesan, which would have to substitute for grana padano. That would work.An investigation of the cupboards and drawers revealed that, yes, they still had the dry penne and the spices he’d bought last time he’d stayed over, and they’d restocked on garlic at some point or another.Best of all, they’d taken to keeping a planter of herbs in the kitchen window, so basil and rosemary were readily accessible.

Finally, daytime television cooking shows were paying off.Thank you, Lidia Bastianich.

This particular recipe was one that he’d made for himself enough times that it was sure to be good, not only because the recipe itself was good, although it really was (again, thank you, Lidia Bastianich), but because he was used to it.There was something familiar about it, too, and sometimes he thought he could vaguely recall eating a similarly spiced sauce when he was young.But the memories were still hazy, even years later.

Salted water on the stove, olive oil in a pan on the burner next to it.Browning the garlic and rosemary, adding the cherry tomatoes (hopefully the girls wouldn’t miss those later) and sugar, cooking all of it down—it was an almost thoughtless process, so much so that it rode the line between “convenient” and “haunting”.How many times had he helped his mother with similar recipes before being carted off to a hotel for seventy years?Was that why it seemed to come so easily?The proportions and some of the ingredients were bound to be different, but the familiarity of the actions remained.

Sometimes he wondered if Bianca would have remembered more of the recipes they'd helped with when they were children in the 1930's.Probably not.

“Neeks, got a minute?”

He exited that train of thought and lingered at the station for a moment before registering that he’d been asked a question.“Sorry, what?”

Annabeth was standing next to him, phone in hand.He hadn’t even heard her enter.“Leo’s saying he can take us as far as Indianapolis if you want to leave for Camp Half Blood tonight, but it’ll take a couple days.Do you want to talk to him?”  
  


Nico sighed.“Shadow travel would be so much faster…”

“But you might not be able to jump us all there in one trip.”

She was right, but he didn’t have to like it.“I can’t guarantee we won’t get blown up by lightning if I fly with you guys,” he cautioned.

“I can!” Leo called, the phone speaker making his voice a little thinner than it was in real life.“Jason’s part of the quest, too, right?So we’re safe.No way Jupiter is gonna try to kill you with his own son on board—besides, doesn’t he owe you, like, a million favors for, you know, helping us stop Gaea?”

“You’d think so, but for immortals, the gods have an abysmally short memory,” Nico quipped.

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds.Finally, Leo spoke again.“You're right, but I think we’ll be fine.First sign of trouble and I’ll let you cast shadow walk out of there, Death Breath.”

“Since when are you into D&D?”

“Shut up._Stranger Things_ and _Critical Role_ did a number on me.Do we have a deal or not?And yes, I can hear you rolling your eyes.”

Nico’s jaw clenched momentarily as he fought the urge to do just that, and he could see Annabeth suppressing a laugh.“Fine, Valdez, but I'm trying to make lunch right now, and if anything burns because I was on the phone, I _will_ haunt you when I die.”

“Yikes.Okay, Annabeth, please take me far away and let Zombie Boy finish cooking.”

The daughter of Athena snorted as she walked back toward the living room.“Just let me know when and where to meet you, and if you don’t text this to Jason, tell me so I can.”

Their voices faded into the background as Nico added the penne and a bit of pasta water to the sauce.During the few minutes that it needed to sit, he hunted down three bowls and forks, and then, finally, portioned out the meal.With a bowl in each hand, he returned to the living room.

“Where can I put these that’s gonna be safe for your work?”

Reyna consolidated her mess of papers into a neat pile in record time, clearing off just enough space for the dishes.He set them down and returned with his own a minute later to find that Annabeth had cleared the couch of her own paperwork, which was now organized into six separate file folders on her drawing desk.

Reyna scooted, crosslegged, to the middle of the sofa and patted the empty space next to her.Nico took the cue.

“What were you guys working on, anyway?”

“Upping the defenses around the camps,” Annabeth answered.“Ideally, we could just reinforce the magic of the boundaries itself, but we haven’t really found a good way to do that without constant monitoring and demigods to actually supply the magic. We were thinking about talking to the Kanes, but we weren't sure if the mythologies were too different for it to help.Also,” she added, around a mouthful of pasta, “this is delicious.”

Reyna nudged him with an elbow.“It really is.Thank you for cooking today.”

“Thank you both for letting me stay,” he murmured, unable to meet their eyes.

That is, until Reyna said, “Look at me,” and then he kind of had to.

“It’s not a problem,” she assured, taking his hand and squeezing it gently.

He lifted her hand to his mouth.“Thanks anyway.”

»»————-————««

It was, for all intents and purposes, evening when they met by the bridge near Temple Hill, but the sun wouldn’t dip below the horizon for another few hours at least.Festus the dragon was practically glowing, each bronze plate seeming to believe it had become a mirror.Nico couldn’t look directly at him.Hazel, with one hand held up to shield her eyes, face halfway to buried in Nico’s shirt, seemed to be having the same issue.

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” Leo called from his seat at the base of Festus’ neck.Calypso sat behind him, arms around his waist, feet hooked onto some hold that Nico couldn’t see from the ground.“Please keep your arms and legs more or less on the dragon!Unfortunately, we do not have floating devices in case of emergencies.I would prefer it if nobody would fall off, but if you do, my good friend Jason, here, will be acting as our lifeguard for the tour.”

Calypso was shaking her head in exasperation, but she was also smiling.

“All aboard!Step right up!Seriously, guys, it’s like a day and a half trip, and that’s _without_ stopping.Plus, even though I extended his body when I remade him, Festus isn’t _technically _designed to carry this many people, so he _will_ need to take breaks.”

If it hadn’t been Leo who’d insisted the trip would be doable, this would be about time for Nico to bow out and insist on shadow travel.Unfortunately, though, he’d seen firsthand what the son of Hephaestus was capable of during his time on the _Argo II_.

Piper climbed up to sit behind Calypso, and Annabeth and Reyna followed quickly afterward.Within a minute, only Jason, Nico, Frank, and Hazel were still on the ground.

Jason rubbed the back of his neck.“I should probably sit in the back.Just, you know, in case of emergency.”

Nico cleared his throat lightly.“That makes sense.”But before he was going to board a sentient automaton, he was going to say goodbye to his sister.He wrapped Hazel in a hug, pressing his fingers into the soft fabric of her praetorial cloak (how the fresh hell she was wearing it in this heat, he didn’t know).She didn’t even come up to his collarbone anymore.“See you soon, okay?”

“Call me when you get there.”She raised her hands to bring his face into reach and planted a kiss on his cheek.  


“Of course,” he replied, touching his lips to her forehead.He gave Frank an only slightly awkward one-armed hug before climbing Festus’ bronze plating to settle into place behind Reyna, and Jason hugged the praetors as well, exchanging quiet goodbyes before flying himself up to the dragon’s spine.

“Take care of my brother,” Hazel called up teasingly, the late sunlight casting her in gold.

It was Jason that answered her.“Will do!Take care of my city.”

Frank grinned up at them easily, comfortable in his own skin in a way that Nico wouldn’t have been able to imagine when they first met.It had been somewhat of a slow process, but Nico was… a little bit proud of him.“_Your_ city?Okay, graecus.”

“Hey—“

“We’ll keep it safe for you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nico was pretty sure he caught Jason tearing up a little.The son of Jupiter raised his hand to wave a goodbye, and Hazel and Frank mirrored the action.

“Bye, guys!” and, “Be safe!” the praetors called.

From the spine of the dragon:

“Bye!”

“Good luck out here!”

“See you soon!”

“Don’t blow up _too _much of camp this time.”

And Festus vaulted into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nico di angelo: i don’t like to be touched  
nico di angelo: kisses hazel on multiple occasions, cuddles hazel while she’s crying until they both fall asleep, lets jason bear hug him, literally on the verge of tears as reyna demonstrates her acceptance of him in the form of public physical affection
> 
> yes, i’m calling my son a liar. imo his aversion to touch reads as heavily linked to his fear of rejection and all of this is to say that it'd be fucking sick for him to be more comfortable w the people he's close to
> 
> also reynabeth apartment tour... god i love them? i love them. that plus the cuddling plus the lidia recipe... this chapter is the most self-indulgent thing i've ever written.
> 
> anyway, with this quick domestic chapter completed, the adventure begins for real now! sorry for this ridiculously long author's note. hope you're having a good new year!


	12. The Worst Uber Experience Yet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rating on homecoming has been updated to m! as of right now, this is largely a language thing, but some of the things i have planned for later chapters are... kind of a lot, too, so unfortunately we're upping the age on this one. sorry y'all.
> 
> aside from that, i've made some minor revisions to the earlier chapters, so hopefully it flows a little better now.

They made it to Salt Lake City before they started plummeting to their deaths.

It wasn’t Jason’s turn to keep watch, but suddenly Leo was screaming _shitshitshitshitshitshitshit_, and everyone else was just… screaming, and when Jason’s eyes flew open, he was hovering in midair while his friends, already feet below him, were dropping _fast_.

Okay, yeah.

Shit.

Jason’s hearing went out. His vision went black. Before he even really noticed, he’d started moving, diving toward the ground until he caught up with, and then passed, Festus, who was futilely flapping his left wing on its own. The one on his right was unmoving and folded, tucked against his bronze body.The winds propelled Jason down, far enough to give him time to steel himself, and then he threw himself under Festus.

With a three-ton metal dragon directly over him and rapidly advancing, he hunched his shoulders and raised his arms, bent at the elbow. He pressed his chin to his chest and braced himself, willing the winds to support not only his own weight, but that of Festus and his six passengers. 

Then, there was the impact.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. The winds were trying their best, swirling and howling all around him in an attempt to make some kind of platform, some kind of cushion, but Jason still felt every vertebra in his spine slam against every other. His muscles still screamed like they were being shredded from the inside out. The winds were slowing their descent, but not entirely. Not enough, because something inside Jason was telling him that, even at this reduced speed, they were still falling with enough momentum to get themselves turned into a 3D stain on the street down below.

_Shit._

But if Percy Jackson could handle Atlas’ burden, he could slow Festus enough to land safely.

If Percy could hold up the sky, he could hold up Festus.

If Percy could—he was getting lightheaded.

_Gods_, he was getting lightheaded.

Suddenly the ground seemed much farther away, but he also felt like it was approaching much faster.Panic rose from his chest to his throat.He couldn’t think. 

He’d been in half a million scenarios more dangerous than this one.So why couldn’t he _think_?

Spots swam across his vision, turning the world to a flat backdrop.Static buzzed in his ears—or was it electricity? 

It better not be electricity. 

He wasn’t about to fry his friends.

He gritted his teeth when the smell of ozone hit him, pulled his energy back, felt the weight of Festus on him now more than ever, saw the ground flying toward him even faster.

No._No._

He called the winds back, strongly and suddenly enough that, briefly, Festus stopped altogether.

It didn’t last.His not-slow-enough descent continued not a second later.

Later, he’d have a vague memory of asking his father to spare him and his friends, to lend a godly hand.Whether or not that actually happened didn’t matter, though, because if Jason really did utter the request, even if only mentally, it went unanswered.

It was about here that Jason recognized that behind the buzzing in his ears there was yelling. More specifically, Reyna and Nico, yelling at _him_, overlaid upon the background noise of four other frantic, but much quieter voices.

He strained his neck to look up at them, careful not to break his concentration on keeping them afloat. Reyna’s arm was outstretched. She was leaning so far to the side that it was probably some kind of miracle she hadn’t fallen off Festus already—she wanted Jason to take her hand. 

He knew about her ability. He also knew that with only seven people, there was the chance that she simply did not have the numbers to sustain him long enough to get them to the ground safely. And then there was the part where, even if they stretched their arms until their shoulders popped out of their sockets, Jason was just too far away to reach her hand. The look in her eyes said she knew this.

And then there was another voice.

“GET OUT FROM UNDER THE DRAGON,” Nico di Angelo was shouting, and, ah, that must be why Reyna hadn’t fallen off. He and Annabeth were clasping the arm that Reyna wasn’t stretching in Jason’s direction.

“YOU’LL FALL,” he screamed back.

“THE SUN’S RISING—”

With his head pounding the way it was, he didn’t know why that was relevant, but Nico was once again yelling at him to _move, Jason_, and so he did the unthinkable: he got out from under the dragon.

His friends were in a nosedive again. They dropped ten, twenty, thirty feet. Then, just as quickly as they’d begun to fall, they disappeared.

It was weird to watch, actually, because it was half like Festus and all of his passengers had dissolved and half like they’d collapsed in on themselves. The motion of it was familiar, he realized, because he’d seen it a hundred times before—the early morning sun had provided Nico with just enough light to find a shadow. A glimmer appeared on the asphalt, and then an entire dragon, passengers and all, melted out of the shadow cast over the wide street by a building some half a mile below.

Jason realized he was able to breathe again and let the winds carry him to the ground.

“What happened?” he asked when his feet touched pavement, ignoring the pressure behind his eyes.

“Something hit us,” Leo replied. He was still shivering as he ran his hands along Festus’ wing, attempting to coax the dragon into unfurling it. “I don’t know what, or exactly where, but….”

“Leo,” Calypso called, “it’s over here. Look at the joint.”

Sure enough, wedged deep into the balljoint that linked the wing to the rest of Festus’ body, there was a long, spiked projectile. Calypso gave it a few solid pulls, but it didn’t budge.

“Damn,” Leo breathed. “Here, we’re going to have to do some repairs, but—“

“—not in the middle of the street,” she finished. “Got it.” She moved to Festus’ other side and flicked a switch at the back of his foreleg. The bronze dragon folded himself neatly into a slightly-larger-than-average briefcase, projectile and all.

Reyna, halfway through rebraiding her hair, swept her gaze over the group. “So what now?”

Leo swiped the back of his hand across his forehead as he picked Festus up. “I have to assess the damage before I can tell you if we need materials, but we need space to do that.”

Reyna nodded slowly and tied off the end of her braid. “And the city isn’t exactly ideal for that.”The breath she took was drawn-out, thoughtful. “What about the lake itself? There has to be somewhere along the shore that isn’t crawling with tourists.”

Piper perked up then. “Didn’t we find celestial bronze for the Argo II at the lake before?”

“We did, but I… may have made some enemies out there last time we passed through.” He said it lightly, but Leo’s eyes had turned distant. Something _else_ lurked in his tone, too, and Jason couldn’t identify it or recall what could have placed it there.

Nico’s jaws stretched in a yawn that interrupted Jason’s internal analysis, and he staggered to keep himself upright. “I can shadow travel us a couple miles away from the shore. If you need supplies after all, I’ll just jump someone else to the lake to get them.”

“I can always fly people, too,” Jason offered. 

Annabeth frowned at them both. “Can you realistically make it?”

“Probably,” Jason answered, at the same time as Nico ventured, “If I die, I die?”

“I don’t think that’s gonna work.” The frown deepened.

“I’m joking, Annabeth. It’s not enough distance to be a problem, especially if Jason’s willing to fly people out afterward. I’d only have to worry about the first jump.”

“Even if it’s not a significant distance, you’re taking yourself, six others, and—Leo, does Festus folding up make it any easier to transport him magically? Or just physically?”

Leo shrugged honestly. “My best guess is that his mass is probably about the same, just compacted into a smaller size with less weight? No clue if Underworld magic cares about any of that, but I’d kinda rather not disappear into the void forever.”

“So that settles that,” Annabeth muttered.

While everyone else had been deliberating, Calypso had slipped one of her backpack’s straps off of her shoulder, shifted the bag to her side, and started rummaging through one of its pockets. “What about the Gray Sisters? Their cab service is about equal parts physical and magical, so—” She stopped speaking when she caught sight of Annabeth shaking her head apologetically. 

“I’m banned from Gray Sisters taxis internationally.”

Calypso cursed under her breath, but there was no blame in her voice.

Reyna’s head tilted to the side. “We might not need the Gray Sisters.” And then, turning to Nico, “What about Jules-Albert?”

“Oh,” Nico replied, as a chorus of _Who?_’s arose from the others. “Yeah, I could call him.We’d have to steal a car, though.”

Reyna raised an eyebrow. Everyone else wore matching expressions of utter confusion.

“He didn’t think that far ahead,” Nico said, as if that explained anything. Apparently, it did, though, because Reyna pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation and shook her head.

Piper glanced across the group quizzically. “I mean, does it have to be demigod magic transportation? We have phones now. We can use Uber.”

There was a short silence, punctuated by an _oh_ from Annabeth.

Piper was stifling a laugh. “Now I know I’ve been out of action for too long,” she said as she dug a cell phone out of one of her pockets.

»»————-————««

Piper, Leo, and Nico were all blessed by a remarkable lack of difficulty reading either letters or numbers, so between the three of them, they managed to call two cars without much trouble at all. That was the easy part.

The hard part came almost an hour into the drive, when Jason was rudely awakened for the second time that morning by the sound of something massive and furry ramming the driver’s side of the SUV following them—the car that Nico, Annabeth, and Reyna were in.

Jason whipped around to look through the rearview window the second his eyes opened.Their Uber driver (a very nice middle-aged white lady named Jeanine) slammed her foot on the gas.

  
  
“What on _earth_?”Her voice and hands were shaky.

Misery and the familiar suffocating feeling of worry washed over him as he watched the car his friends were in—now turned on its side, shards of shattered glass glittering on the surrounding ground—grow farther and farther away.

“Ma’am,” he tried, but it came out strangled, inaudible over Piper and Leo’s panicked requests to turn around.Jeanine was still accelerating.

The monster that had hit the car his friends were in was backing, up, shaking its head to clear it after the impact, and—_what_ was _that_.

The creature’s horns slowly rotated, spinning like they were trying to drill a hole into its own head.But that, of course, would be far too convenient a way for a monster to get killed.

It was gearing up to hit them again.

Jason turned back around.

“Ma’am,” he repeated urgently, louder and more clearly this time, leaning forward and gripping the shoulder of the driver’s seat, “you need to make a U-turn and pick up the other driver.”

“Are you all insane?!” she demanded.It wasn’t a question.“Bulls shouldn’t get that big—we can’t be here, I’m calling….”She trailed off, probably not knowing who to call.Jason couldn’t blame her.He didn’t think animal control took on jobs this big.

“We can take _care_ of it!” Leo insisted desperately.“We—we’re experienced ranchers!”

“Right!” Calypso agreed, gesturing a little too frantically to her boyfriend as she added, “He’s from Texas!We can handle it.”

“I can’t just let you kids—”Jeanine’s hands were trembling against the steering wheel again.

Then, Piper forced out a laugh, and Jason could already feel the charmspeak on her voice, settling into his skull, bringing his adrenaline down.“We deal with stuff like this all the time on the—ranch,” she said, keeping her tone light even as her fist clenched, even as the words left her lips just a little too quickly.“It’s really no big deal for us, but that other driver is in trouble right now.You want to help, don’t you?”

“I—I want to help.”Her eyes were growing distant.

“Then you need to turn around, right?To pick up the driver and let us handle the—the bull.And, uh, you probably want to floor it until we get close.”

The hatchback slowed almost enough for a turn, then hurtled around so suddenly that Jason was thrown against a startled-looking Leo’s side, pushing him into Calypso in turn.It was probably a miracle that the car didn’t flip, and Piper turned around to mouth a _sorry_ at them as the speedometer crept back up toward eighty.

As they approached, Jason was able to get a better look at the situation.He had been on his fair share of adventures, he was pretty sure, but he’d never seen anything like whatever this monster was.

It was kind of like a goat, except that it was the size of a Hummer, built more like a musk ox than anything Jason had ever seen at a petting zoo (though, admittedly, he hadn’t been to many petting zoos to begin with), and it had curved horns that had to be close to four feet long.The same horns that Jason had witnessed rotating on its head before.Its tail was short, straight, and hairless, except for a tuft of fur at the very end.More concerning, though, was that its orthodontic nightmare of an underbite made room for tusks each the size of a man’s forearm.

Jason sucked in a breath.

Reyna was crouched behind the overturned SUV’s roof, next to someone who must have been the car’s owner.Nico and Annabeth, meanwhile, had their swords drawn as they stared down the two-ton monster.Jason had seen it move, now.It was faster than it should have been, given its size, and the length of its horns meant it wouldn’t be easy to get a hit in.Not to mention that a blow from something that size could be fatal.

Jeanine swerved into the dust and grass off the side of the road, never quite stopping but slowing enough for four demigods to leap out, all of their seatbelts having been discarded the second they realized they’d survived the U-turn.

Piper was the first out.“I’ll take care of the drivers,” she said, and took off without waiting for an answer.She drew Katoptris as she sprinted toward Reyna, just in case. 

Jason flipped the coin from his pocket, satisfied that it came up as a seven-foot-long pilum rather than his usually-preferred gladius.He took a step forward. The spear flew from his hand, and then he was charging with Calypso and Leo on his heels. 

The spearhead of his pilum sank into the creature’s matted coat, deep enough that Jason thought it must have hit flesh, but the monster inconveniently did not disintegrate into a sandy dust.

The attack did catch its attention, though.

If you’ve never seen a goat with boar tusks snarling like it thought it was a rabid dog, you don’t want to.

It whirled to face the demigods racing toward it and jerked its head forward with enough force to throw its horns into a spin.They arced forward like claws. 

It abandoned its fight with Nico and Annabeth to come at Jason, Calypso, and Leo full speed. 

Annabeth threw her drakon-bone sword in an arc that should have done it some damage, but the blade bounced harmlessly off its coat, and Jason heard her swear as she detoured to pick it back up.She and Nico were going after the monster, but not fast enough.It outpaced them with every step.

It was too close now.A smell like wet dog hit Jason’s nose.The monster lowered its head to gore whoever ended up in its path.

Jason yelled, “Split up!” before he had time to even think the words.

Leo rolled to one side and started running, his free hand already starting to glow the deep orange of molten metal, while Calypso darted in the other direction, hand closed around the handle of a knife Jason hadn’t noticed she’d been carrying.Jason shot straight up—his pilum was still embedded in the monster’s flank, leaving him unarmed, and the creature didn’t even seem bothered.

Luckily, Calypso was apparently a better shot than he was.The knife she threw as the monster barreled past found its way into its heel, and the creature let out a rumbling cry that _definitely_ didn’t sound goatlike as it stumbled to the side.Before it had the chance to turn on her, though, Leo was sending a curveball of flame into the fur of its shoulder.The fire burned for a bit, then fizzled out, leaving a singed crater at the point of impact that almost made it through to skin.

For a second, Jason feverishly wondered how the monster could tolerate the summer heat with all that fur, but then he was given more important things to think about.

For example: even limping, the monster was able to charge Leo just fine.

Calypso had sprung to her feet and was now sprinting in Leo’s direction.Annabeth and Nico, having closed the distance between the car wreckage and the scene now, trailed right behind her.

Time seemed to slow itself, and blood roared in a weaponless Jason’s ears as he willed the winds to get him to his best friend before the monster did.The son of Hephaestus was bracing himself to dodge, his muscles tensed and knees bent, but the hand that wasn’t holding the Festus-case was emitting the pulsating light of fresh magma, probably as backup in case his timing was off.If he ran too early, the monster would have time to readjust its course and get in a blow that could be fatal.Too late, and it would hit him for sure.Within moments, Jason was on top of it, grasping instinctively at fur, not knowing whether his body was trying to pull the monster backward or distract it from its path, make it try to chase him instead, give Leo a chance to run.

In the end, flying was faster than running, but nothing quite beat teleportation.

As Jason’s fingertips grazed the curve of one of the monster’s horns, an almost-unsafe amount of time before Leo would have had to dodge the attack, Nico di Angelo materialized, grabbed his smoldering wrist, and sank them both into darkness.

Jason shot skyward the second they disappeared.When he turned around, the two had melted out of Calypso’s shadow, and Nico had already collapsed, the palm of one hand a raw, mottled pinkish color.

Leo shook his head and made what Jason recognized as his universal _why-do-you-insist-on-not-using-your-brain_ gesture, but Annabeth looped her arms under Nico’s and pulled him up, tossing his limp body over one shoulder. 

This time, when the monster turned, Leo was beyond ready for an attack.As the creature shook its head to rotate its horns again, he sent a stream of flame into its side, burning the fur at its collar clean off and turning the skin underneath an ugly red.It roared in anger, but then two arrows sprouted from its throat. 

Still by the wreckage, Piper had Reyna’s bow in her hands, one arrow drawn and ready to be fired if the monster tried to get up again, but it didn’t.Slowly, it rippled into dust, and she returned the final arrow to its quiver.It was about then that Jason realized Reyna was still on the ground—not crouched, as he’d initially thought, but slumped, leaned up against the roof of the SUV for support.

He felt his heart drop.

»»————-————««

The initial impact of the monster hitting the back door on Reyna’s side had shattered three of her ribs, and it was for this reason that Calypso was now inside of Reyna’s Huntress-issued tent as opposed to outside, helping Leo make repairs to Festus.There was also the matter of Nico’s hand, but according to Calypso, the burns were second-degree at worst due to the lack of prolonged exposure, and it was extremely easy to slather a safe amount of nectar on a wound when the owner of that wound was soundly passed out.Fractures, however, were another story, and while the ambrosia square she’d eaten definitely helped with the ribs, it also pushed Reyna steadily toward a fever.Rather than risking spontaneously combusting a friend, Calypso had turned to her own magic, gently trying to knit Reyna’s bones back together while the former praetor clenched her fists and teeth.

Jason had suggested Reyna squeeze his hand during the process, but she’d predictably refused, reasoning that that would probably result in more injuries for Calypso to take care of.She probably wasn’t wrong.

Outside, it seemed Leo’s immunity to fire extended to the summer heat, because even while he still had on the button-down he was using as an overshirt, he was working on extracting the… whatever-it-was from Festus without breaking a sweat.Without Calypso to work with him, they’d no doubt be stuck on the side of the road for longer, but when Jason offered to help, Leo had shaken his head.

“No offense, and you know I love you,” he’d said, “but I’ve fixed this guy so many times it’d probably take longer for me to explain how to speed up the process than to just do it myself.”

Which brought Jason here, to the spacious interior of Reyna’s massive, silver, Hunter-manufactured-Artemis-approved tent. It was air conditioned, insulated comfortably against the heat of the outside, and magically stocked with sleeping bags, a variety of fresh, healthy snacks, and self-refilling goblets of icy water. Nico had mentioned the tent to him before, he remembered, but he was realizing that he’d never witnessed it firsthand. Now, he couldn’t believe that the camps ever allowed teenagers to go on quests with nothing but meagerly-stocked backpacks—Artemis had the right idea.

A few times, passing mortals slowed in their cars to ask what the hell had happened to their car and truck (Jason assumed the truck in question was Festus) and if they needed help, to which Piper insisted that it was a random cattle stampede and that AAA roadside service should be there any minute. When Annabeth had asked if random cattle stampedes were even a thing that happened, Piper simply shrugged and plucked a strawberry from Annabeth’s bowl.

Usually, Piper, Reyna, and Annabeth would be attached at the hip any time they were in the same state, but with Reyna injured, Piper and Annabeth had taken to sitting facing the opening of the tent, giving Calypso space to work.Nico’s unconscious body almost granted her that same consideration, but he curled close to the daughter of Bellona, his forehead pressed to her shoulder, his bandaged hand placed gently over her closed fist. 

Jason didn’t think he’d ever get used to scenes like that one. 

Even when he and Reyna had been close during their time serving in the Legion (although, admittedly, his memory of this period of his life was still fuzzy at best), he couldn’t imagine himself in Nico’s place.And even as the son of Hades had become more open over the years, Jason didn’t think he would ever be able to forget the fourteen-year-old boy who’d warned him against physical contact.At least, he was pretty sure he’d never be able to forget enough to reconcile that image of Nico with this one.

He was struck again by the recognition that he was out of the loop.

Maybe that was what he’d wanted. After years of being known as Jupiter’s son, praetor to the Twelfth Legion, head counselor of the Zeus cabin, borderline-Pontifex Maximus… he’d been tired. He’d wanted to be completely unknown for a change, somehow, somewhere. But now that he was surrounded by his old friends again, he was rooted in place by the fact that he didn’t even know whether or not to approach them.

How ridiculous was that, right?They were his _friends_.

Or they had been.His contact had become less and less regular as he’d had to cope with the stresses of mundane life, to the point that he hadn’t even _seen_ any of them, not face-to-face, for… at least a few years.The past few years had been texted birthday messages and rare FaceTime calls.Even though Piper visited Los Angeles with her father every once in a while.Even though Nico lived under an hour away.

It was Piper that beckoned him over, because of course it was.Breathing a miniature sigh of relief, he plopped down next to her on a bed of cushions, leaning back against the low table (seriously, what kind of tent comes with a table?).She slung an arm across his shoulders, and Annabeth took that as an opportunity to snatch a grape from between her fingers.Piper had the good humor to pretend to look offended as Annabeth popped the grape into her mouth, and Jason stifled a smile, slipping an arm around his ex-girlfriend’s waist without a second thought.

“So, day one and we’ve already run into… what, three life-threatening situations?” 

“It was two, by my count,” Piper said, her gaze fixed innocently on Jason as her hand crept toward Annabeth’s strawberries.

Annabeth moved the bowl closer to her hand, and a smile formed on her lips when Piper’s fingers brushed its silver edge.“Are we counting Festus getting hit and almost falling to our deaths as two separate life-threatening situations?Because then we can argue it was three, but I think I’m still siding with Piper on this one.”

“Whatever hit Festus could have hit any of us,” Jason explained, “so I’m counting it as separate.”

Piper shrugged.“Have it your way.”She took a bite of a strawberry.

“What was that monster, anyway?”

Annabeth was the one to answer.“Yale.”

He made a face.“As in university?”

She thought about it for a moment.“It’s possible the school was named after the monster.For some reason, the British decided to associate them with heraldry and the Royal Family, so they have a pretty good reputation, considering they’re basically just giant aggressive goats.”

“Right…” he trailed off.“How do you just know all this?I had to take monster-identification classes and I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“They’re pretty rare, honestly, but you forget that my girlfriend’s baby brother is an internationally ranked Mythomagic player.”

One of Piper’s eyebrows raised, and the corners of her mouth tugged themselves into a teasing grin.“Annabeth Chase, have you been participating in family game night?”

“That one was more like osmosis, but Reyna has been looking into D&D lately if you feel like simulating the kind of adventure we try to avoid in real life.”

Piper went quiet for a moment, leaning forward to rest her cheek against her hand.“Do we try to avoid it, though?” she asked.“I mean, we’re all here.”

“Do you regret it?”

With barely a moment’s hesitation, Piper answered, “No.”She sighed and shuffled into a slouch, leaning her back against Jason instead of the table.“I definitely didn’t miss the danger, but… I missed you guys, and I think… I think we all had to be here.”

Jason nodded, his mind already drifting.He knew what she meant, knew that, of the handful of reasons he’d had to leave behind his peaceful life in the mortal world for a quest that could mean his death, one of those reasons was the simple feeling that he was meant to.The feeling that this quest was, in some way or another, supposed to be his, as much as it was supposed to be Nico’s.

But then, he wondered how much of that feeling was, in actuality, just his sense of responsibility.Could he have turned down the quest, even if it hadn’t been his to take?He didn’t know, but he had the sneaking suspicion that even if he could, he wouldn’t have.

“Hey,” Piper’s voice brought him out of it.“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied, stretching his mouth into a grin.“I think the heat was getting to me a little.”Never mind that the interior of the tent was a comfortable oasis.

Piper didn’t look convinced (half-honesty didn’t really work when talking to a child of Aphrodite about feelings), but she let it drop.

“You said your dad is away on a job, right?” he asked, changing the subject.

Her expression said that she’d noticed the attempt.“He’s off filming for a horror movie this time,” she answered anyway.The warm look on her face was replaced by an embarrassed one, but she still laughed as she noted, “No shirtless scenes this time, thank the gods.”She glanced between Jason and Annabeth, then took one of each of their hands in her own.“Which means… _this _one we can see when it comes out.All of us, together.Ten-person movie date.”

Jason squeezed her hand.“That sounds good,” he said, as Annabeth affirmed, “I’m in.”

Oh, but— “Are you gonna have a lot of catching up to do after the quest?” Jason asked, turning his attention to the daughter of Athena.“Reyna says you’re running a consulting job _and_ doing freelance architecture?”

She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair.“I wasn’t really in the middle of any projects.As far as I’m concerned, we’re on hiatus.”

He nodded.“Fair enough….”For what it was worth, the City of New Rome had offered him free room and board enough times for him to know that Annabeth probably had very few expenses to be taking care of, especially with Reyna living with her.It wasn’t every day you had upstairs neighbors who’d gone on an overseas journey into legendarily dangerous forbidden lands to save your life, society, and probably planet, after all.

“And you, son of Jupiter?” Piper prodded with mock gravity before breaking into a muffled laugh.“What do you have going on back home?Any exes you need me to threaten?”She patted Katoptris for emphasis.

“Pipes, how many times do I have to tell you _not_ to hold people up at knifepoint?” he whined, throwing an arm in the air in feigned exasperation.

“I can always hold them at swordpoint if that makes it any easier,” Annabeth offered, which was considerably scarier, because Jason had never been great at telling when she in particular was joking.

“I—I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue.”

“If you say so,” Piper shrugged.“No threatening Jason’s non-me exes until further notice.”She held out a hand.

Annabeth shook it.“Deal.”

“Deal.”

It was then that Leo poked his head inside the opening of the tent, and, seeing the trio of demigods lined up at its entrance, flopped, belly first, onto the heavily cushioned floor, narrowly avoiding clipping the edge of the table as he did.He heaved a massive sigh, but still showed no trace of sweat, and, remarkably, appeared to be free of motor oil, too.

“You good?” Jason asked, offering a hand in case Leo wanted help sitting up.

He didn’t take it, opting to roll over onto his back instead.“_I’m_ fine,” he huffed.“I just want to know why everyone likes targeting my dragon so much.He’s done nothing wrong!”

“He is a literal glimmering beacon of demigod activity,” Piper pointed out.

  
  
“And that’s not his fault!”

She reached over to ruffle his hair.“I know this and I love you both.”

He batted her hand away good-naturedly, but she swatted him back.

“So what hit us?”Annabeth had leaned forward to meet Leo’s eyes.

He shook his head.“I got the spike out, and it’s definitely not mechanical.If y’all know of any monsters that shoot projectiles that high, I’m all ears, but otherwise, my bet is on ‘giant sentient cactus’ except the cactus is _really_ upset with us for some reason.”

Annabeth’s jaw set in a hard line that made it very clear that _yes_, she did know of a monster that could have pulled something like that off.Piper must have noticed it too, because she sent the daughter of Athena a concerned look.

“Can’t manticores—” she started.

“They can,” Annabeth answered grimly.“Last time I had to deal with one, I don’t think its range was that good, but…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Leo finished.“The damage wasn’t actually so bad, really, just some warping on the metal of the joint itself and a couple of severed wires.We’ll have to fly higher to be safe, but as far as fixing him goes, it’s really just getting the metal to set right and cool before we take off again.We can be out of here by evening.”

“Sooner, if you have another pair of hands,” Calypso added, having walked up behind them all undetected.

Leo’s face split in a smile.“You’re right about that one.”

And she was.Festus was fixed before Reyna’s ribs were, but they stayed on the ground to let them heal, Calpyso occasionally using short bursts of magic to coax the bones back together, then leaving them to rest for a bit.

Nico’s hand healed completely within a couple hours, but he was still out cold by the time Reyna reached full recovery in the afternoon.

“Should we wait for him to, like, get up?” Leo asked, rubbing the back of his neck uncertainly.“I know you guys did fine sleeping on Festus last night, but I don’t think that’s really the same thing as this.”

He was right.Jason was pretty sure they had all been on the run enough times that, on quests, they were rarely completely asleep.Their bodies still reacted to any change in environment, always ready to have to be awake again.He’d seen it every time he’d been an overnight lookout on Festus—the dragon’s spine would curve to navigate around an obstacle or adjust course, and, even asleep, everyone adjusted their weight to maintain balance.Jason was sure he did things like that, too.This morning, his body had reacted to Festus before he’d even been awake to realize what had happened.He’d controlled the winds without thinking about it.

But Nico?Right now?He was a ragdoll.He was capable of _moving_, sure, shifting in his sleep every once in a while, but there was no way he’d have the level of consciousness necessary to safely ride a flying automaton with no seatbelts for… a while, at least.

“I can just hold onto him,” Jason blurted.The automaticity of the response surprised even him, so when Piper shot him a look he couldn’t quite read, he averted his eyes to find Reyna’s instead and quickly tacked on an, “If you think he’d be okay with that?”

Her eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly.“You’re the least likely to run into problems if he falls off.”

“Right.”So why was his mouth so dry all of a sudden?He felt like he’d just shoved a fistful of dust down his throat.

“Right.”

Leo cleared his throat.“If y’all’re done being awkward, we should get going soon.”

“H—”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Lightning Boy.”

Jason closed his mouth.

“Thought so,” he grinned.“Let’s go.”

Reyna stifled a laugh and elbowed Jason gently in the side when she got close enough.Gesturing to Nico, she said, “I’ll grab his ankles if you get his torso.Annabeth can get the tent folded up.”

And so it was that Jason was once again the last person on Festus.It did take him and Reyna both to maneuver Nico into a sitting position on the dragon, but when they finally managed it, she turned to Jason and flashed him an apologetic smile.

“If you get uncomfortable like that, you can always lean him against me.Just don’t let go completely.”

Nico had grown so much taller than her that the mental image of her supporting him would have been funny, if not for the fact that she could flip even Frank over her shoulder like it was nothing.

Jason tilted his head to the side to maintain eye contact with her around the mass of black hair in front of him.“This is fine, unless you think he’s gonna startle himself into falling when he wakes up.”

He received his second unreadable look of the day and she shook her head, but the remnants of her smile stayed put on her face.“You’re aware that you guys are friends, right?”He opened his mouth to answer, but she continued before he had the chance.“I’m not worried about him.I’m telling _you_ that if your arm starts losing feeling, I’m here to help.”

He couldn’t help the sheepish expression that made its way onto his face.“I’m okay, Reyna.Don’t worry.”

She continued to hold that dubious stare a few moments longer before she turned around.“I’ll take your word for it.”

When Festus took off this time, Nico’s head snapped straight back onto Jason’s shoulder.He made a tiny groan in his sleep that sounded an awful lot like annoyance before turning to press his face into Jason’s neck at an angle that _couldn’t_ be comfortable and would _definitely_ end in a later request for Advil.Jason didn’t have the heart to move him, though, even if there was no way Nico would be awake enough to notice, so instead he patted him once on the head before winding his arms a little tighter around him, just in case they hit turbulence on the ride.

»»————-————««

As it turned out, he didn’t really have to worry about it.

The winds were smooth, and the skies were free of monsters.With another body settled against him, Jason wasn’t bothered by the wind chill, and he was close enough to Reyna to make conversation—for a while, they tried to think of road trip games, but none of ones they could come up with were… adaptable enough to work as flight trip games.They took the time to catch up again instead.

Reyna told him about how she’d left the Huntresses.It hadn’t even been a year before she’d realized that, as much as she was fine leaving behind potential romantic attachments to men, there were other things that she _wasn’t_ ready for.In the end, she couldn’t give up the friendships she’d formed with the men in her life (“Yes, that includes you,” she told him, one eyebrow raised), but the thing that had sucker punched her hardest was the recognition that she _did_ want a romantic relationship—just not one with a man in it.Artemis/Diana had been surprisingly understanding and even more surprisingly supportive; Reyna said that something in her face made it look like she’d known from the beginning that this would happen.She’d actually spent a few years at Camp Half-Blood, after that, which Jason had either never realized or forgotten over time, and for a her last couple years as a teenager, she even tried high school.She actually didn’t return to New Rome until she abandoned a mortal college in Oakland for New Rome University, and the rest was more or less history.

He told her about boarding school in the mortal world, about community college in Pasadena and university in Long Beach, about how absolutely ridiculous it was that he’d had to take a statistics class as an English major (Reyna agreed).He told her about how, then, _after_ he’d finished a bachelor’s degree, he’d decided to go _back_ and do it all over again for a certificate in paralegal studies.And how, after that, he’d almost considered going back _again_ for child developmental psychology or nutrition or art history.There was just so much about the mortal world that he’d missed out on growing up in the closed-off society of New Rome that college had felt like seeing the ocean for the first time.He told her about his betta fish, and how his neighbor had agreed to keep him indefinitely, and how he’d wanted to get a dog but was now considering a cat instead, and she listened and made fun of him for naming a fish “Neptune”, and for the first time, he felt like he knew what their friendship had been before his memories of it were stolen.

They’d relaxed into a comfortable silence long before Nico woke up.When he did, he woke with a start, quickly disentangling himself from Jason and shifting his weight forward and away, but he was not, in fact, surprised enough to throw himself off of Festus.

“Sorry for drooling on you,” he muttered, and even in the dim light of evening, Jason knew his ears would be getting redder.“Thanks for not letting me fall to my death.”

Jason tugged at his saliva-free shirt.“No drool here.You’re good.”

“It was a—sorry.Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a problem.”

Reyna said something, but it wasn’t for Jason, and his mind was lost now, wading distantly through the expanse of air before him.The chill of the air this high up was hitting him, now, and as he drifted off to sleep, he was acutely aware of the lack of warmth, the absence of pressure against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 05.31: PLEASE GO TO https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/# AND SIGN THE PETITIONS! SUPPORT PROTESTERS IF YOU CAN! IF YOU'RE IN THE US, CALL YOUR LOCAL REPRESENTATIVES. CALL YOUR NON-LOCAL REPRESENTATIVES. DEMAND JUSTICE.
> 
> omg i'm actually so sorry it took me four months to write 6k words lmao i really got my ass handed to me this semester (and, like... year. what on EARTH goes on over here).
> 
> couple updates though.  
\- as stated, we now have an m rating to be on the safe side & since i said "shit" 9 times in the first page  
\- tags are updated because in the past handful of months i've decided that anything in canon that i simply do not vibe with did not happen in the universe of this fic :~) you can assume most major plot points are the same (other than the one toa spoiler that we don't talk about) and anything that i kept in when i was trying to be Very canon-compliant in the beginning will be more or less the same but hey. my house now.
> 
> anyway. i love jason and i wish he got to have more development with his friends (ESPECIALLY reyna like BRO... they were FRIENDS and we barely ever see it. i feel robbed) so that's what we're exploring for a little bit in these next few chapters! he has an interesting relationship with... everyone where he's always at least a little bit guarded, wearing a little bit of a mask. ideally we'll get him to drop that a little and just... be jason. somehow this manifested as "jason is literally starving for human connection" but we'll see where that goes


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